Punishment Research Paper

Statistics show that there is a high rate of criminal recidivism in the United States. This raises the question, “Does punishment deter crime?”

Resources: Ch. 7 of Society

Research the affects of the four types of punishment—retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and societal protection—in relation to today’s American society, as outlined in the Summing Up: Four Justifications for Punishment table (p. 194) in Ch. 7 of the text. Try search terms such as “effects of retribution on American society.”

Write a 600 to 800-word paper that summarizes your research results and addresses the following questions:

· Which type of punishment deters crime most effectively?

· Do the consequences of punishment provide any benefits for criminals and society?

Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.

Cite 2 or more sources; at least two must come from the UOPX Library. You may refer to the Recommended Websites list in the Electronic Resources section at the beginning of this syllabus for additional sources.

Deviance7
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• Why does every
society have
deviance?

• How does who and
what are defined a

deviant reflect social
inequality?

• What effect has
punishment had in
reducing crime in the
United States?

Watch the Core

Concepts in Sociology video
“Infidelity” on mysoclab.com

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This chapter explores issues involving crime and criminals, asking
not only how our criminal justice system handles offenders but also
why societies develop standards of right and wrong in the first place.
As you will see, the law is simply one part of a complex system of
social control: Society teaches us all to conform, at least most of the
time, to countless rules. We begin our investigation by defining sev-
eral basic concepts.

What Is Deviance?

Deviance is the recognized violation of cultural norms. Norms guide
virtually all human activities, so the concept of deviance is quite broad.
One category of deviance is crime, the violation of a society’s formally
enacted criminal law. Even criminal deviance spans a wide range, from
minor traffic violations to prostitution, sexual assault, and murder.

Most familiar examples of nonconformity are negative instances
of rule breaking, such as stealing from a campus bookstore, assault-
ing a fellow student, or driving while intoxicated. But we also define
especially righteous people—students who speak up too much in
class or people who are overly enthusiastic about the latest electronic
gadgets—as deviant, even if we give them a measure of respect. What
all deviant actions or attitudes, whether negative or positive, have in
common is some element of difference that causes us to think of
another person as an “outsider” (H. S. Becker, 1966).

Not all deviance involves action or even choice. The very
existence of some categories of people can be troublesome to others.

To the young, elderly people may seem hopelessly “out of touch,”and to
some whites, the mere presence of people of color may cause dis-
comfort. Able-bodied people often view people with disabilities as an
out-group, just as rich people may shun the poor for falling short of
their high-class standards.

Social Control
All of us are subject to social control, attempts by society to regulate
people’s thoughts and behavior. Often this process is informal, as when
parents praise or scold their children or when friends make fun of a
classmate’s choice of music. Cases of serious deviance, however, may
bring action by the criminal justice system, the organizations—police,
courts, and prison officials—that respond to alleged violations of the
law.

How a society defines deviance, who is branded as deviant, and
what people decide to do about deviance all have to do with the way
a society is organized. Only gradually, however, have people come to
understand that the roots of deviance are deep in society, as the chap-
ter now explains.

The Biological Context
Chapter 3 (“Socialization: From Infancy to Old Age”) explained
that a century ago, most people understood—or more correctly,
misunderstood—human behavior to be the result of biological
instincts. Early interest in criminality therefore focused on biological

172 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Chapter Overview This chapter investigates how society encourages both conformity and deviance,
and it also provides an introduction to crime and the criminal justice system.

“I was like the guy lost in another dimension, a stranger in town, not knowing

which way to go.” With these words, Bruce Glover recalls the day he returned to his hometown of

Detroit, Michigan, after being away for twenty-six years—a long stretch in a state prison. Now fifty-six years

of age, Glover was a young man of thirty when he was arrested for running a call girl ring. Found guilty at

trial, he was given a stiff jail sentence.

“My mother passed while I was gone,” Glover continues, shaking his head. “I lost everything.” On the

day he walked out of prison, he realized just how true that statement was. He had nowhere to go and no

way to get there. He had no valid identification, which he would need to find a place to live and a job. He

had no money to buy the clothes he needed to go out and start looking. He turned to a prison official and

asked for help. Only with the assistance of a state agency was he finally able to get some money and tem-

porary housing (C. Jones, 2007).

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causes. In 1876, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), an Italian physician
who worked in prisons, theorized that criminals stand out physically,
with low foreheads, prominent jaws and cheekbones, protruding ears,
hairy bodies, and unusually long arms. All in all, Lombroso claimed
that criminals look like our apelike ancestors.

Had Lombroso looked more carefully, he would have found the
physical features he linked to criminality throughout the entire pop-
ulation. We now know that no physical traits distinguish criminals
from noncriminals.

In the middle of the twentieth century, William Sheldon took
a different approach, suggesting that body structure might predict
criminality (Sheldon, Hartl, & McDermott, 1949). He cross-checked
hundreds of young men for body type and criminal history and
concluded that delinquency was most common among boys with
muscular, athletic builds. Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck (1950)
confirmed that conclusion but cautioned that a powerful build does
not necessarily cause or even predict criminality. Parents, they sug-
gested, tend to be somewhat distant from powerfully built sons, who
in turn grow up to show less sensitivity toward others. In a self-
fulfilling prophecy, people who expect muscular boys to be bullies
may act in ways that bring about the aggressive behavior they expect.

Today, genetics research seeks possible links between biology
and crime. In 2003, scientists at the University of Wisconsin reported
results of a twenty-five-year study of crime among 400 boys. The
researchers collected DNA samples from each boy and noted any his-
tory of trouble with the law. The researchers concluded that genetic
factors (especially defective genes that, say, make too much of an
enzyme) together with environmental factors (especially abuse early
in life) were strong predictors of adult crime and violence. They
noted, too, that these factors together were a better predictor of crime
than either one alone (Lemonick, 2003; Pinker, 2003).

CRITICAL REVIEW Biological theories offer a limited
explanation of crime. The best guess at present is that biological
traits in combination with environmental factors explain some
serious crime. Most of the actions we define as deviant are car-
ried out by people who are physically quite normal.

In addition, because a biological approach looks at the indi-
vidual, it offers no insight into how some kinds of behaviors come
to be defined as deviant in the first place. Therefore, although
there is much to learn about how human biology may affect
behavior, research currently puts far greater emphasis on social
influences.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING What does biological
research add to our understanding of crime? What are the limi-
tations of this approach?

Deviance CHAPTER 7 173

Deviance is always a matter of difference. Deviance emerges in everyday
life as we encounter people whose appearance or behavior differs from
what we consider “normal.” Who is the “deviant” in this photograph? From
whose point of view?

Personality Factors
Like biological theories, psychological explanations of deviance focus
on individual abnormality. Some personality traits are inherited, but
most psychologists think personality is shaped primarily by social
experience. Deviance, then, is viewed as the result of “unsuccessful”
socialization.

Classic research by Walter Reckless and Simon Dinitz (1967)
illustrates the psychological approach. Reckless and Dinitz began by
asking teachers to categorize twelve-year-old male students as either
likely or unlikely to get into trouble with the law. They then inter-
viewed both the boys and their mothers to assess each boy’s self-
concept and how he related to others. Analyzing their results, the
researchers found that the “good boys” displayed a strong conscience
(what Freud called superego), could handle frustration, and identified

deviance the recognized violation of cultural norms

crime the violation of a society’s formally enacted criminal law

social control attempts by society to regulate people’s thoughts and behavior

criminal justice system the organizations—police, courts, and
prison officials—that respond to alleged violations of the law

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with cultural norms and values. The “bad boys,” by contrast, had a
weaker conscience, displayed little tolerance for frustration, and felt
out of step with conventional culture.

As we might expect, the “good boys” went on to have fewer run-
ins with the police than the “bad boys.” Because all the boys lived in
areas where delinquency was widespread, the investigators attrib-
uted staying out of trouble to a personality that controlled deviant
impulses. Based on this conclusion, Reckless and Dinitz called their
analysis containment theory.

CRITICAL REVIEW Psychologists have shown that per-
sonality patterns have some connection to deviance. Some seri-
ous criminals are psychopaths who do not feel guilt or shame,
have no fear of punishment, and have little sympathy for the peo-
ple they harm (Herpertz & Sass, 2000). However, as noted in the
case of biological factors, most serious crimes are committed by
people whose psychological profiles are normal.

Both biological and psychological research views deviance
as a trait of individuals. The reason these approaches have lim-
ited value in explaining deviance is that wrongdoing has more to
do with the organization of society. We now turn to a sociologi-
cal approach, which explores where ideas of right and wrong
come from, why people define some rule breakers but not oth-
ers as deviant, and what role power plays in this process.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Why do biological and psy-
chological analyses not explain deviance very well?

The Social Foundations of Deviance
Although we tend to view deviance as the free choice or personal fail-
ings of individuals, all behavior—deviance as well as conformity—is
shaped by society. Three social foundations of deviance identified
here will be detailed later in this chapter:

1. Deviance varies according to cultural norms. No thought or
action is inherently deviant; it becomes deviant only in rela-
tion to particular norms. State law permits prostitution in rural
areas of Nevada, although the practice is outlawed in the rest of
the United States. Twelve states have gambling casinos, twenty-
nine have casinos on Indian reservations, and four other states
have casinos at racetracks. In all other states, casino gambling
is illegal. Text-messaging while driving is legal in thirty-three
states but against the law in seventeen others (six other states
forbid the practice for young drivers). Until 2008, when a
court struck down the law, only Florida legally banned gay men
and lesbians from adopting a child (Ruggieri, 2008; American
Gaming Association, 2009; National Conference of State Legis-
latures, 2010).

Further, most cities and towns have at least one unique
law. For example, Mobile, Alabama, outlaws the wearing of
stiletto-heeled shoes; Pine Lawn, Missouri, bans saggy, “low-
rider” pants; South Padre Island, Texas, bans the wearing of
neckties; Mount Prospect, Illinois, has a law against keeping
pigeons or bees; Topeka, Kansas, bans snowball fights; Hoover,
South Dakota, does not allow fishing with a kerosene lantern;

and Beverly Hills, California, regulates the number of
tennis balls allowed on the court at one time (R. Steele,
2000; Wittenauer, 2007).

Around the world, deviance is even more diverse.
Albania outlaws any public display of religious faith,
such as “crossing” oneself; Cuba bans citizens from
owning personal computers; Vietnam can prosecute
citizens for meeting with foreigners; Malaysia does not
allow tight-fitting jeans for women; Saudi Arabia bans
the sale of red flowers on Valentine’s Day; Iran does
not allow women to wear makeup and forbids the
playing of rap music (Chopra, 2008).

2. People become deviant as others define them that way.
Everyone violates cultural norms at one time or
another. For example, have you ever walked around
talking to yourself or “borrowed” a pen from your
workplace? Whether such behavior defines us as men-
tally ill or criminal depends on how others perceive,
define, and respond to it.

3. Both norms and the way people define rule breaking
involve social power. The law, claimed Karl Marx, is

174 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Why is it that street-corner gambling like this is usually against the law but playing the
same games in a fancy casino is not?

Deviance, the violation of norms, is a broad concept. Crime,
the violation of formally enacted law, is one type of deviance.

Making the Grade

The three arguments below explain why we cannot fully understand
deviance only by looking at the deviant person. We need a broader,
sociological perspective to examine society.

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the means by which powerful people protect their
interests. A homeless person who stands on a street cor-
ner speaking out against the government risks arrest for
disturbing the peace; a mayoral candidate during an elec-
tion campaign doing exactly the same thing gets police
protection. In short, norms and how we apply them
reflect social inequality.

The Functions
of Deviance: Structural-
Functional Analysis
The key insight of the structural-functional approach is that
deviance is a necessary element of social organization. This
point was made a century ago by Emile Durkheim.

Durkheim’s Basic Insight
In his pioneering study of deviance, Emile Durkheim (1964a,
orig. 1893; 1964b, orig. 1895) made the surprising statement
that there is nothing abnormal about deviance. In fact, it per-
forms four essential functions:

1. Deviance affirms cultural values and norms. As moral crea-
tures, people must prefer some attitudes and behaviors to others.
But any definition of virtue rests on an opposing idea of vice:
There can be no good without evil and no justice without crime.
Deviance is needed to define and support morality.

2. Responding to deviance clarifies moral boundaries. By defin-
ing some individuals as deviant, people draw a boundary
between right and wrong. For example, a college marks the
line between academic honesty and deviance by disciplining
students who cheat on exams.

3. Responding to deviance brings people together. People typi-
cally react to serious deviance with shared outrage. In doing so,
Durkheim explained, they reaffirm the moral ties that bind
them. For example, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks, people across the United States were joined by a com-
mon desire to protect the country and bring the perpetrators
to justice.

4. Deviance encourages social change. Deviant people push a
society’s moral boundaries, suggesting alternatives to the sta-
tus quo and encouraging change. Today’s deviance, declared
Durkheim, can become tomorrow’s morality (1964b:71, orig.
1895). For example, rock-and-roll, condemned as immoral in
the 1950s, became a mainstream, multibillion-dollar industry
just a few years later (see the Thinking About Diversity box on

pages 54–55). In recent decades, hip-hop music has followed
the same path toward respectability.

An Illustration: The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay

Kai Erikson’s classic study of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay brings
Durkheim’s theory to life. Erikson (2005b, orig. 1966) shows that even
the Puritans, a disciplined and highly religious group, created deviance
to clarify their moral boundaries. In fact, Durkheim might well have
had the Puritans in mind when he wrote:

Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals.
Crimes, properly so called, will there be unknown; but faults which
appear [insignificant] to the layman will create there the same scandal
that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousness. . . . For the
same reason, the perfect and upright man judges his smallest failings
with a severity that the majority reserve for acts more truly in the
nature of an offense. (1964b:68–69, orig. 1895)

Deviance is thus not a matter of a few “bad apples” but a necessary
condition of “good” social living.

Deviance may be found in every society, but the kind of deviance
people generate depends on the moral issues they seek to clarify. The
Puritans, for example, experienced a number of “crime waves,”
including the well-known outbreak of witchcraft in 1692. With each
response, the Puritans answered questions about the range of proper
beliefs by celebrating some of their members and condemning oth-
ers as deviant.

Deviance CHAPTER 7 175

Durkheim claimed that deviance is a necessary element of social organization,
serving several important functions. After a man convicted of killing a child settled in
their New Hampshire town, residents came together to affirm their community ties as
well as their understanding of right and wrong. Has any event on your campus
caused a similar reaction?

Notice that Durkheim considered deviance to be a natural and
necessary part of all social organization.

Making the Grade Keeping in mind Durkheim’s claim that society creates deviance
to mark moral boundaries, can you suggest why we often define
people only in terms of their deviance, for example, by calling
someone an “addict” or a “thief”?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

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Erikson discovered that although the offenses changed, the pro-
portion of the population the Puritans defined as deviant remained
steady over time. This stability, he concluded, confirms Durkheim’s
claim that society creates deviants to mark its changing moral bound-
aries. In other words, by constantly defining a small number of peo-
ple as deviant, the Puritans maintained the moral shape of their society.

Merton’s Strain Theory
Some deviance may be necessary for a society to function, but Robert
Merton (1938, 1968) argued that too much deviance results from par-
ticular social arrangements. Specifically, the extent and kind of
deviance depend on whether a society provides the means (such as
schooling and job opportunities) to achieve cultural goals (such as
financial success). Merton’s strain theory of deviance is illustrated in
Figure 7–1.

Conformity lies in pursuing cultural goals through approved
means. Thus the U.S. “success story” is someone who gains wealth
and prestige through talent, schooling, and hard work. But not every-
one who wants conventional success has the opportunity to attain it.
For example, people living in poverty may see little hope of becom-
ing successful if they play by the rules. According to Merton, the

strain between our culture’s emphasis on wealth and the lack of
opportunities to get rich may encourage some people, especially the
poor, to engage in stealing, drug dealing, and other forms of street
crime. Merton called this type of deviance innovation—using uncon-
ventional means (street crime) rather than conventional means (hard
work at a “straight” job) to achieve a culturally approved goal
(wealth).

The inability to reach a cultural goal may also prompt another
type of deviance that Merton calls ritualism. For example, people
who believe they cannot achieve the cultural goal of becoming rich
may stick rigidly to the rules (the conventional means) in order at
least to feel respectable.

A third response to the inability to succeed is retreatism: rejecting
both cultural goals and means so that one in effect “drops out.” Some
alcoholics, drug addicts, and street people are retreatists. The deviance
of retreatists lies in their unconventional lifestyles and, perhaps more
seriously, in what seems to be their willingness to live this way.

The fourth response to failure is rebellion. Like retreatists, rebels
such as radical “survivalists” reject both the cultural definition of
success and the conventional means of achieving it but go one step
further by forming a counterculture supporting alternatives to the
existing social order.

Deviant Subcultures
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin (1966) extended Merton’s theory,
proposing that crime results not simply from limited legitimate (legal)
opportunity but also from readily accessible illegitimate (illegal)
opportunity. In short, deviance or conformity depends on the relative
opportunity structure that frames a person’s life.

The life of Al Capone, a notorious gangster, illustrates Cloward
and Ohlin’s theory. As a son of poor immigrants, Capone faced bar-
riers of poverty and ethnic prejudice, which lowered his odds of
achieving success in conventional terms. Yet as a young man during
the Prohibition era (the years between 1920 and 1933, when alco-
holic beverages were banned in the United States), Capone found in
his neighborhood people who could teach him how to sell alcohol
illegally—a source of illegitimate opportunity. Where the structure
of opportunity favors criminal activity, Cloward and Ohlin predict
the development of criminal subcultures, such as Capone’s criminal
organization or today’s inner-city street gangs.

But what happens when people are unable to find any opportu-
nities, legal or illegal? Then deviance may take one of two forms. One
is conflict subcultures, such as armed street gangs that regularly engage
in violence, ignited by frustration and a desire for respect. Another
possible outcome is the development of retreatist subcultures, in which
deviants drop out and abuse alcohol or other drugs.

Albert Cohen (1971, orig. 1955) suggests that criminality is most
common among lower-class youths because they have the least

176 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Accept Reject

R
ej

ec
t

A
cc

ep
t

Conventional Means

C
u

lt
u

ra
l G

o
al

Through
New Means

Seeking
New Goals

Conformity

Ritualism

Innovation

Retreatism

Rebellion

FIGURE 7–1 Merton’s Strain Theory of Deviance
Combining a person’s view of cultural goals and the conventional means
to obtain them allowed Robert Merton to identify various types of
deviance.
Source: Merton (1968).

Merton’s strain theory shows how people’s opportunities (or
lack of opportunities) to achieve cultural goals can encourage
both deviance and conformity. In addition, what sociologists
call people’s “structure of opportunities” helps explain the
type of deviance they engage in.

Making the Grade Making the Grade
Study the definition of labeling theory, which is the key idea of
the symbolic-interaction approach. Be sure you understand
this statement: Deviance results not so much from what
people do as from how others respond to what they do.

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opportunity to achieve success by conventional means. Neglected
by society, they seek self-respect by creating a deviant subculture
that defines as worthy the traits these youths do have. Being
feared on the street may win few points with society as a whole,
but it may satisfy a youth’s desire to “be somebody” in a local
neighborhood.

Walter Miller (1970, orig. 1958) adds that deviant subcul-
tures are characterized by (1) trouble, arising from frequent con-
flict with teachers and police; (2) toughness, the value placed on
physical size, strength, and agility, especially among males; (3)
smartness, the ability to succeed on the streets, to outsmart or “con”
others; (4) a need for excitement, the search for thrills, risk, or
danger; (5) a belief in fate, a sense that people lack control over
their own lives; and (6) a desire for freedom, often expressed as
anger toward authority figures.

Finally, Elijah Anderson (1994, 2002; Kubrin, 2005) explains that
in poor urban neighborhoods, most people manage to conform to
conventional (“decent”) values. Yet faced every day with neighbor-
hood crime and violence, indifference or even hostility from police,
and sometimes even neglect from their own parents, some young
men decide to live by the “street code.” To show that he can survive
on the street, a young man displays “nerve,” a willingness to stand up
to any threat. Following this street code, the young man believes that
even a violent death is better than being “dissed” (disrespected) by
others. Some manage to escape the dangers, but the risk of ending
up in jail—or worse—is very high for these young men, who have
been pushed to the margins of our society.

CRITICAL REVIEW Durkheim made an important contri-
bution by pointing out the functions of deviance. However, there is
evidence that a community does not always come together in reac-
tion to crime; sometimes fear of crime drives people to withdraw
from public life (Liska & Warner, 1991; Warr & Ellison, 2000).

Merton’s strain theory also has been criticized for explain-
ing some kinds of deviance (stealing, for example) better than
others (crimes of passion or mental illness). Furthermore, not
everyone seeks success in conventional terms of wealth, as
strain theory suggests.

The general argument of Cloward and Ohlin, Cohen, and
Miller—that deviance reflects the opportunity structure of
society—has been confirmed by later research (Allan &
Steffensmeier, 1989; Uggen, 1999). However, these theories fall
short by assuming that everyone shares the same cultural stan-
dards for judging right and wrong. If we define crime as includ-
ing not just burglary and auto theft but also fraud and other
crimes carried out by corporate executives and Wall Street
tycoons, many more high-income people will be counted among
criminals. There is evidence that people of all social backgrounds

have become more casual about breaking the rules, as the See-
ing Sociology in Everyday Life box on page 180 explains.

Finally, all structural-functional theories suggest that every-
one who breaks the rules will be labeled deviant. However,
becoming deviant is actually a highly complex process, as the
next section explains.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Why do you think many of
the theories just discussed seem to say that crime is more com-
mon among people with lower social standing?

Deviant subcultures affect specific segments of the popula-
tion. At the same time, as the economy rises and falls, the level
of criminal activity typically goes up and down. Hard times, in
short, tend to encourage widespread anxiety and a belief that we
have to look out for ourselves any way we can. Seeing Sociology
in the News on pages 178–79 offers a recent chapter in this very
old story.

Labeling Deviance:
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis
The symbolic-interaction approach explains how people come to see
deviance in everyday situations. From this point of view, definitions
of deviance and conformity are surprisingly flexible.

Deviance CHAPTER 7 177

Young people cut off from legitimate opportunity often form subcultures that
many people view as deviant. Gang subcultures are one way young people
gain the sense of belonging and respect denied to them by the larger culture.

An old saying goes, “Sticks and stones can break my bones,
but names can never hurt me.” What might labeling theory
have to say about this claim?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

labeling theory (p. 178) the idea that deviance and conformity result not so
much from what people do as from how others respond to those actions

stigma (p. 178) a powerfully negative label that greatly changes a person’s
self-concept and social identity

medicalization of deviance (p. 179) the transformation of moral and legal
deviance into a medical condition

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178 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Labeling Theory
The central contribution of symbolic-interaction analysis is labeling
theory, the idea that deviance and conformity result not so much from
what people do as from how others respond to those actions. Labeling
theory stresses the relativity of deviance, meaning that people may
define the same behavior in any number of ways.

Consider these situations: A college student takes a sweater off
the back of a roommate’s chair and packs it for a weekend trip, a
married woman at a convention in a distant city has sex with an old
boyfriend, and a mayor gives a big city contract to a major campaign
contributor. We might define the first situation as carelessness, bor-
rowing, or theft. The consequences of the second situation depend
largely on whether the woman’s behavior becomes known back home.
In the third situation, is the mayor choosing the best contractor or
paying off a political debt? The social construction of reality is a highly
variable process of detection, definition, and response.

Primary and Secondary Deviance

Edwin Lemert (1951, 1972) observed that some norm violations—say,
skipping school or underage drinking—may provoke some reaction
from others, but this process has little effect on a person’s self-concept.
Lemert calls such passing episodes primary deviance.

But what happens if people take notice of someone’s deviance
and really make something of it? After an audience has defined some
action as primary deviance, the individual may begin to change, tak-
ing on a deviant identity by talking, acting, or dressing in a different

way, rejecting the people who are critical, and repeatedly breaking the
rules. Lemert (1951:77) calls this change of self-concept secondary
deviance. He explains that “when a person begins to employ . . . deviant
behavior as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment to the . . . prob-
lems created by societal reaction . . . , deviance [becomes] secondary.”
For example, say that people have begun describing a young man as an
“alcohol abuser,” which establishes primary deviance. These people
may then exclude him from their friendship network. His response
may be to become bitter toward them, start drinking even more, and
seek the company of others who approve of his drinking. These actions
mark the beginning of secondary deviance, a deeper deviant identity.

Stigma

Secondary deviance marks the start of what Erving Goffman (1963)
called a deviant career. As people develop a deeper commitment to their
deviant behavior, they typically acquire a stigma, a powerfully negative
label that greatly changes a person’s self-concept and social identity.

A stigma operates as a master status (see Chapter 4,“Social Inter-
action in Everyday Life”), overpowering other dimensions of identity
so that a person is discredited in the minds of others and consequently
becomes socially isolated. Often a person gains a stigma informally as
others begin to see the individual in deviant terms. Sometimes, how-
ever, an entire community stigmatizes a person in a public way through
what Harold Garfinkel (1956) calls a degradation ceremony. A crimi-
nal prosecution is one example, operating much like a high school
graduation ceremony in reverse: A person stands before the commu-
nity to be labeled in negative rather than positive terms.

Ex-Employees Turn to Cyber Crime after Layoffs
BY ALEJANDRO MARTINEZ-CABRERA
April 8, 201

SAN FRANCISCO—When a slumping economy
and historically high unemployment rates
dropped the ax on the country’s workforce and
left the survivors wondering if—or when—they’d
be next, law enforcers and security experts braced
themselves for what they considered would be an
almost inevitable rise in data breaches and high-
tech crimes. And they were right.

National unemployment rates peaked in
October at 10.1 percent and remained at 9.7
percent during the first two months of the year.
Local law enforcers say the inability to find gain-
ful employment has been a recurrent motiva-
tion behind new cases of identity theft and
software piracy that drop on their desks almost
daily.

“We’re constantly coming across people who
typically we wouldn’t see and wouldn’t engage in

this criminal behavior if the economy was better.
They see it as a way out,” said Detective Sgt. Ken
Taylor of California’s Silicon Valley high-tech
crimes task force Rapid Enforcement Allied Com-
puter Team.

In one recent case under investigation, Tay-
lor said, an unemployed San Mateo, California,
woman in her twenties was detained with a large
number of re-encoded credit cards in her pos-
session. She said she was using them to buy
food.

And a Fremont, California, man who had been
recently laid off was arrested in February for sell-
ing pirated copies of a $2,500 Adobe design pro-
gram for $150 on Craigslist. Task force members
could look at cases of workers-turned-software-
pirates all day every day, Taylor said.

According to cyber-security researchers, cor-
porations across all industries have been dealing
with a steadily growing number of internal data
breaches since the financial meltdown.

A Verizon data-loss report noted that individ-
uals with insider knowledge of organizations
accounted for 20 percent of all breaches last year,
and that number has been increasing as economic
malaises drag on, said Chris Novak, managing
principal of Verizon Business’s Global Investiga-
tive Response Team.

Even though external attacks made up the
bulk of the breaches, the report found that each
internal incident compromised on average
100,000 individual pieces of sensitive informa-
tion—at least 60,000 pieces more than external
hacks.

Researchers say that anyone from top-level
executives and IT personnel to low-level support
employees can have access to data that can be sold
illegally. A 2009 survey of almost 1,000 laid-off
individuals found that 59 percent admitted keep-
ing company data after leaving the business,
according to the Ponemon Institute, a privacy
research center in Traverse City, Michigan.

Seeing SOCIOLOGY in the

San Francisco Chronicle

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Retrospective and Projective Labeling

Once people stigmatize a person as deviant, they may engage in
retrospective labeling, a reinterpretation of the person’s past in light
of some present deviance (Scheff, 1984). For example, after discov-
ering that a priest has sexually molested a child, others rethink his
past, perhaps offering comments such as “He always did want to be
around young children.” Retrospective labeling, which distorts a per-
son’s biography by being highly selective, typically deepens a deviant
identity.

Similarly, people may engage in projective labeling of a stigma-
tized person, using a deviant identity to predict the person’s future
actions. Regarding the priest, people might say,“He’s going to keep at
it until he’s caught.” The more people in someone’s social world think
such things and act accordingly, the more these definitions affect the
individual’s self-concept, and the greater the chance that the predic-
tions will come true.

Labeling Difference as Deviance

Is a homeless man who refuses to allow police to take him to a city shel-
ter on a cold night simply trying to live independently, or is he “crazy”?
People have a tendency to treat behavior that irritates or threatens them
not simply as “different” but as deviance or even mental illness.

The psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (1961, 1970, 2003, 2004) claims
that people are too quick to apply the label of mental illness to con-
ditions that simply amount to differences we don’t like. The only
way to avoid this troubling practice, Szasz concludes, is to stop using
the idea of mental illness entirely. The world is full of people whose

differences in thought or action may irritate us, but such differences
are not grounds for defining someone as mentally ill. Such labeling,
Szasz says, simply enforces conformity to the standards of people
powerful enough to impose their will on others.

Most mental health professionals reject the idea that mental ill-
ness does not exist. But they agree that it is important to think care-
fully about how we define “difference.” First, people who are
mentally ill are no more to blame for their condition than people
who suffer from cancer or some other physical problem. Therefore,
having a mental or physical illness is no grounds for a person being
labeled “deviant.” Second, people (especially those without the med-
ical knowledge to diagnose mental illness) should avoid applying
such labels just to make others conform to their own standards of
behavior.

The Medicalization of Deviance
Labeling theory, particularly the ideas of Szasz and Goffman, helps
explain an important shift in the way our society understands
deviance. Over the past fifty years, the growing influence of psy-
chiatry and medicine has led to the medicalization of deviance,
the transformation of moral and legal deviance into a medical
condition.

Medicalization amounts to swapping one set of labels for
another. In moral terms, we judge people or their behavior as either
“bad” or “good.” However, the scientific objectivity of medicine
passes no moral judgment, instead using clinical diagnoses such as
“sick” or “well.”

Deviance CHAPTER 7 179

In fact, data breach originators are “moving
from being just the administrators and super-type
users to your everyday users,” Novak said.

“When data breaches are caused by adminis-
trators or super users, it’s a big deal and the
organization loses a great deal of information,” he
said. “When they come from average users, they’re
smaller pinpricks but can drag on longer and cost
the company more in the long run.”

Stolen data can range from employees’ health
care records or clients’ credit card numbers to
merger and acquisition plans, confidential agree-
ments or valuable source code, said Rick Kam,
president and co-founder of data breach preven-
tion firm ID Experts.

Thieves can easily sell the information to
cyber-criminal rings or use it as a bargaining
chip to get a job with their former employer’s
competitors. According to the Ponemon Insti-
tute study, 67 percent of respondents said they
would use “their former company’s confidential,

sensitive or proprietary information to leverage
a new job.”

“The issue of identity theft is all about oppor-
tunity,” Kam said. “And our first instinct is to pro-
tect ourselves.”

In one case handled by Kam’s company six
months ago, a disgruntled man went as far as try-
ing to extort his former employer, a large health
care provider, by threatening to release thousands
of sensitive patient records that would have trig-
gered an avalanche of lawsuits.

Those who remain employed but fear being
the next to go can also grow alienated or resentful
toward their companies and may be tempted to
steal corporate data, said Kevin Rowney, director
of breach response at Symantec.

“It’s a common trend in economic history.
Rising stress creates the circumstances that moti-
vate people to go into financial fraud,” Rowney
said. “Employees in this economy feel it’s every
man for himself.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. In what way does this article show that crime
is not just a personal behavior but also a
societal issue?

2. If anxiety and a sense that “it’s every man for
himself” breed crime, can you think of ways
in which we can generate a stronger sense of
community and collective responsibility?
What would you suggest?

3. If you were a courtroom judge, would you be
inclined to show leniency toward someone
who engaged in cyber crime because the per-
son was facing economic challenges? Why or
why not?

“Ex-Employees Turn to Cyber Crime after Layoffs” by
Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera, April 8, 2010, San Francisco
Chronicle, is reprinted by permission of the publisher.

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To illustrate this idea, until the mid-twentieth century, most
people viewed alcoholics as morally weak people easily tempted by
the pleasure of drink. Gradually, however, medical specialists rede-
fined alcoholism so that most people now consider it a disease,
leading us to define alcoholics as “sick” rather than “bad.” In the
same way, obesity, drug addiction, child abuse, sexual promiscu-
ity, and other behaviors that used to be strictly moral matters are
widely defined today as illnesses for which people need help rather
than punishment.

The Difference Labels Make

Whether we define deviance as a moral or a medical issue has three
consequences. First, it affects who responds to deviance. An offense
against common morality typically brings a reaction from members
of the community or the police. A medical label, however, places the
situation under the control of clinical specialists, including coun-
selors, psychiatrists, and physicians.

A second issue is how people respond to deviance.A moral approach
defines deviants as offenders subject to punishment. Medically, however,

180 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

SEEING SOCIOLOGY
IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Deviant Subculture: Has It Become
OK to Break the Rules?

ASTRID: Simon! You’re downloading that music
illegally. You’ll get us both into trouble!

SIMON: Look, everyone cheats. Rich CEOs cheat
in business. Ordinary people cheat on their taxes.
Politicians lie. What else is new?

ASTRID: So it’s OK to steal? Is that what you really
believe?

SIMON: I’m not saying it’s OK. I’m just saying
everyone does it. . . .

It’s been a couple of bad years for the idea of
playing by the rules. First we learn that the exec-
utives of not just one but many U.S. corpora-
tions are guilty of fraud and outright stealing on
a scale that most of us cannot even imagine.
More recently, we realize that the Wall Street
leaders running the U.S. economy not only did a
pretty bad job of it but paid themselves tens of
millions of dollars for doing so. And of course,
even the Catholic church, which we hold up as
a model of moral behavior, is still trying to
recover from the charges that hundreds of
priests have sexually abused parishioners (most
of them under the age of consent) for decades
while church officials covered up the crimes.

There have been plenty of theories offered
about what is causing this widespread wrongdo-
ing. Some suggest that the pressure to win—by
whatever means necessary—in the highly com-
petitive world of business and politics can be
overwhelming. As one analyst put it, “You can
get away with your embezzlements and your lies,
but you can never get away with failing.”

Such thinking helps explain the wrongdo-
ing among many CEOs in the corporate world
and the conviction of several members of Con-
gress for ethics violations, but it offers little
insight into the problem of abusive priests. In
some ways at least, wrongdoing seems to have

become a way of life for just about everybody.
For example, the Internal Revenue Service
reports that Simon is right—millions of

U.S.

taxpayers cheat on their taxes, failing to pay an
estimated $345 billion each year. The music
industry claims that it has lost billions of dollars
to illegal piracy of recordings, a practice espe-
cially common among young people. Perhaps
most disturbing of all, surveys of students in
high school, college, and also graduate school
show that about half say that they cheated on
a test at least once during the past year
(Gallup, 2004; Morin, 2006).

Emile Durkheim viewed society as a moral
system, built on a set of rules about what people
should and should not do. Years earlier, another
French thinker named Blaise Pascal made the
opposite claim that “cheating is the foundation
of society.” Today, which of the two statements
is closer to the truth?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. In your opinion, how widespread is wrong-
doing in U.S. society today?

2. Do you think the people who break the
rules usually think that their actions are
wrong? Why or why not?

3. What do you think are the reasons for the
apparent increase in dishonesty?

Sources: Based on “Our Cheating Hearts” (2002) and Bono
(2006).

Do you consider cheating in school wrong?
Would you turn in someone you saw
cheating? Why or why not?

Making the Grade

Explain in your own words sociologist Howard Becker’s (1966)
statement that deviance is nothing more than behavior that
people define as deviant.

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

The development of secondary deviance is one application of
the Thomas theorem (see Chapter 6, “Social Interaction in
Everyday Life”), which states that situations people define as
real become real in their consequences.

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they are patients who need treatment. Punishment is designed to fit the
crime, but treatment programs are tailored to the patient and may
involve any therapy that a specialist thinks might prevent future illness.

Third, and most important, the two labels differ on the issue of
the competence of the deviant person. From a moral standpoint,
whether we are right or wrong, at least we are responsible for our
own behavior. Once we are defined as sick, however, we are seen as
unable to control (or if “mentally ill,” even to understand) our
actions. People who are labeled incompetent are subject to treat-
ment, often against their will. For this reason alone, defining deviance
in medical terms should be done with extreme caution.

Sutherland’s Differential
Association Theory
Learning any social pattern, whether conventional or deviant, is a process
that takes place in groups.According to Edwin Sutherland (1940), a per-
son’s tendency toward conformity or deviance depends on the amount
of contact with others who encourage or reject conventional behavior.
This is Sutherland’s theory of differential association.

A number of studies confirm the idea that young people are
more likely to engage in delinquent behavior if they believe that
members of their peer group encourage such activity (Akers et al.,
1979; Miller & Matthews, 2001). One recent investigation focused
on sexual activity among eighth-grade students. Two strong predic-
tors of such behavior in young girls were having a boyfriend who
encouraged sexual relations and having girlfriends they believed
would approve of such activity. Similarly, boys were encouraged to
become sexually active by friends who rewarded them with high sta-
tus in the peer group (Little & Rankin, 2001).

Hirschi’s Control Theory
The sociologist Travis Hirschi (1969; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1995)
developed control theory, which states that social control depends on
people’s anticipating the consequences of their behavior. Hirschi
assumes that everyone finds at least some deviance tempting. But the
thought of a ruined career keeps most people from breaking the rules;
for some, just imagining the reactions of family and friends is enough.
On the other hand, people who think that they have little to lose from
deviance are likely to become rule breakers.

Specifically, Hirschi links conformity to four different types of
social control:

1. Attachment. Strong social attachments encourage conformity.
Weak family, peer, and school relationships leave people freer to
engage in deviance.

2. Opportunity. The greater a person’s access to legitimate oppor-
tunity, the greater the advantages of conformity. By contrast,

someone with little confidence in future success is more likely
to drift toward deviance.

3. Involvement. Extensive involvement in legitimate activities—
such as holding a job, going to school, or playing sports—
inhibits deviance (Langbein & Bess, 2002). By contrast, people
who simply “hang out” waiting for something to happen have
the time and energy to engage in deviant activity.

4. Belief. Strong beliefs in conventional morality and respect for
authority figures restrain tendencies toward deviance. By contrast,
people with a weak conscience (and who are left unsupervised)
are more open to temptation (Stack, Wasserman, & Kern, 2004).

Hirschi’s analysis calls to mind our earlier discussions of the
causes of deviant behavior. Here again, a person’s relative social priv-
ilege and family and community environment affect the risk of
deviant behavior (Hope, Grasmick, & Pointon, 2003).

Deviance CHAPTER 7 181

In 2010, Amy Bishop, a biology professor with a Harvard Ph.D., was
denied tenure by her colleagues at the University of Alabama Huntsville.
Soon after that, she took a gun to a campus faculty meeting and killed
three colleagues, wounding three others. What effect does the social
standing of the offender have in our assessment of her as “crazy” or “sick”
as opposed to simply “evil”?

Deviance can be defined as either a moral or a medical issue.
Be sure you understand the three key differences between
defining deviance one way or the other.

Making the Grade
Context guides how we define someone’s action. For example, Amy
Bishop shot and killed her brother in 1986; back then, her action
was ruled accidental. In light of this recent shooting, authorities
reopened the earlier case and indicted Bishop.

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CRITICAL REVIEW The various symbolic-interaction
theories all see deviance as a process. Labeling theory links
deviance not to action but to the reaction of others. Thus some
people are defined as deviant but others who think or behave in
the same way are not. The concepts of secondary deviance,
deviant career, and stigma show how being labeled deviant can
become a lasting self-concept.

Yet labeling theory has several limitations. First, because it
takes a highly relative view of deviance, labeling theory ignores
the fact that some kinds of behavior—such as murder—are con-
demned just about everywhere. Therefore, labeling theory is most
usefully applied to less serious issues, such as sexual promis-
cuity or mental illness. Second, research on the consequences
of deviant labeling does not clearly show whether deviant label-
ing produces further deviance or discourages it (Smith & Gartin,

1989; Sherman & Smith, 1992). Third, not everyone resists being
labeled as deviant; some people actively seek it (Vold & Bernard,
1986). For example, people engage in civil disobedience and
willingly subject themselves to arrest in order to call attention to
social injustice.

Sociologists consider Sutherland’s differential association
theory and Hirschi’s control theory important contributions to
our understanding of deviance. But why do society’s norms and
laws define certain kinds of activities as deviant in the first place?
This important question is addressed by social-conflict analy-
sis, the focus of the next section.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Clearly define primary
deviance, secondary deviance, deviant career, and stigma.

Deviance and Inequality:
Social-Conflict Analysis
The social-conflict approach links deviance to social inequality. That
is, who or what is labeled “deviant” depends on which categories of
people hold power in a society.

Deviance and Power
Alexander Liazos (1972) points out that the people we tend to define
as deviants—the ones we dismiss as “nuts” and “sluts”—are typically
not those who are bad or harmful as much as they are powerless. Bag
ladies and unemployed men on street corners, not corporate polluters
or international arms dealers, carry the stigma of deviance.

Social-conflict theory explains this pattern in three ways. First,
all norms—especially the laws of any society—generally reflect the
interests of the rich and powerful. People who threaten the wealthy
are likely to be labeled deviant, whether it’s by taking people’s prop-
erty (“common thieves”) or advocating a more egalitarian society
(“political radicals”). Karl Marx, a major architect of the social-
conflict approach, argued that the law and all social institutions
support the interests of the rich. Or as Richard Quinney puts it,
“Capitalist justice is by the capitalist class, for the capitalist class, and
against the working class” (1977:3).

Second, even if their behavior is called into question, the power-
ful have the resources to resist deviant labels. The majority of the cor-
porate executives who were involved in the corporate scandals of
recent years were not arrested, and only a small number ever went to
jail.

Third, the widespread belief that norms and laws are “just” and
“good” masks their political character. For this reason, although we
may condemn the unequal application of the law, most of us give
little thought to whether the laws themselves are really fair or not.

182 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

All social groups teach their members skills and attitudes that encourage
certain behavior. In recent years, discussion on college campuses has
focused on the dangers of binge drinking, which results in several dozen
deaths each year among young people in the United States. How much of
a problem is binge drinking on your campus?

Why do you think that politicians and other well-known
people who get into trouble with the law often claim they
have a problem with alcohol or other drugs and check into
“rehab”?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

Students often have difficulty clearly defining secondary
deviance and distinguishing it from primary deviance.
Carefully review these concepts.

Making the Grade
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Deviance and Capitalism
In the Marxist tradition, Steven Spitzer (1980) argues that deviant
labels are applied to people who interfere with the operation of cap-
italism. First, because capitalism is based on private control of prop-
erty, people who threaten the property of others—especially the poor
who steal from the rich—are prime candidates for being labeled
deviant. Conversely, the rich who take advantage of the poor are less
likely to be labeled deviant. For example, landlords who charge poor
tenants high rents and evict those who cannot pay are not consid-
ered criminals; they are simply “doing business.”

Second, because capitalism depends on productive labor, peo-
ple who cannot or will not work risk being labeled deviant. Many
members of our society think people who are out of work, even
through no fault of their own, are somehow deviant.

Third, because the operation of the capitalist system depends
on respect for authority figures, people who resist authority are likely
to be labeled deviant. Examples are children who skip school or talk
back to parents or teachers and adults who do not cooperate with
employers or police.

Fourth, anyone who directly challenges the capitalist status quo
is likely to be defined as deviant. Such has been the case with labor
organizers, radical environmentalists, civil rights and antiwar activists,
and feminists.

On the other side of the coin, society positively labels whatever
supports the operation of capitalism. For example, winning athletes
enjoy celebrity status because they make money and express the val-
ues of individual achievement and competition, both vital to capi-
talism. Also, Spitzer notes, we condemn using drugs of escape
(marijuana, psychedelics, heroin, and crack) as deviant but promote
drugs (such as alcohol and caffeine) that encourage adjustment to
the status quo.

The capitalist system also tries to control people who don’t fit
into the system. The elderly, people with mental or physical disabili-
ties, and Robert Merton’s “retreatists” (people addicted to alcohol or
other drugs) represent a “costly yet relatively harmless burden” to
society. Such people, claims Spitzer, are subject to control by social
welfare agencies. But people who openly challenge the capitalist sys-
tem, including the inner-city “underclass” and revolutionaries—Mer-
ton’s “innovators” and “rebels”—are controlled by the criminal justice
system and, if necessary, military forces such as police SWAT teams
and the National Guard.

Note that both the social welfare and criminal justice systems
blame individuals, not the system, for social problems. Welfare
recipients are considered unworthy freeloaders, poor people who
rage at their plight are labeled rioters, anyone who actively challenges
the government is branded a radical or a communist, and those who
attempt to gain illegally what they will never get legally are rounded
up as common criminals.

White-Collar Crime
In a sign of things to come, a Wall Street stockbroker named Michael
Milken made headlines in 1987 when he was jailed for business fraud.
Milken attracted attention because not since the days of Al Capone
had anyone made so much money in one year: $550 million—about
$1.5 million a day (Swartz, 1989).

Milken engaged in white-collar crime, defined by Edwin
Sutherland in 1940 as crime committed by people of high social posi-
tion in the course of their occupations. White-collar crime does not
involve violence and rarely brings police with guns drawn to the
scene. Rather, white-collar criminals use their powerful offices ille-
gally to enrich themselves or others, often causing significant pub-
lic harm in the process. For this reason, sociologists sometimes call
white-collar offenses “crime in the suites” as opposed to “crime in
the streets.”

The most common white-collar crimes are bank embezzle-
ment, business fraud, bribery, and violating antitrust laws that

Deviance CHAPTER 7 183

Perhaps no one better symbolized the greed that drove the Wall Street
meltdown of 2008 than Bernard Madoff, who swindled thousands of
people and organizations out of some $50 billion. In 2009, after pleading
guilty to eleven felony counts, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in
prison. Do you think white-collar offenders are treated fairly by our criminal
justice system? Why or why not?

How would a Marxist analysis explain the fact that hundreds
of miners have died in coal mines in West Virginia and other
states in recent decades without anyone being charged with
any crime?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life white-collar crime crime committed by people of high social position in the

course of their occupations

corporate crime (p. 184) the illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on
its behalf

organized crime (p. 184) a business supplying illegal goods or services

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require businesses to be competitive. Sutherland (1940) explains that
such white-collar offenses typically end up in a civil hearing rather
than a criminal courtroom. Civil law regulates business dealings
between private parties; criminal law defines a person’s moral respon-
sibilities to society. In practice, someone who loses a civil case pays
for damage or injury but is not labeled a criminal. Furthermore, cor-
porate officials are protected by the fact that most charges of white-
collar crime target the organization rather than individuals.

In the rare cases that white-collar criminals are charged and con-
victed, they usually escape punishment. A government study found
that those convicted of fraud and punished with a fine ended up pay-
ing less than 10 percent of what they owed; most managed to hide or
transfer their assets to avoid paying up. Among white-collar crimi-
nals convicted of embezzlement, only about half ever served a day in
jail. One accounting found that just 57 percent of the embezzlers
convicted in the U.S. federal courts served prison sentences; the rest
were put on probation or issued a fine (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statis-
tics, 2010). As some analysts see it, until courts impose more prison
terms, we should expect white-collar crime to remain widespread
(Shover & Hochstetler, 2006).

Corporate Crime
Sometimes whole companies, not just individuals, break the law.
Corporate crime consists of the illegal actions of a corporation or peo-
ple acting on its behalf.

Corporate crime ranges from knowingly selling faulty or dan-
gerous products to deliberately polluting the environment (Derber,
2004). The collapse of a number of corporations in recent years,
linked to criminal conduct on the part of company officials, has cost
tens of thousands of people their jobs and their pensions.

In addition, companies often violate safety regulations, resulting
in injury or death. Between 2006 and 2010, more than 125 people
died in underground coal mines in the United States, in many cases
amid allegations of safety violations. We might also wonder whether
any “safe” mines really exist in light of the fact that hundreds more
people died from “black lung” disease resulting from years of inhal-
ing coal dust. The death toll for all job-related hazards in the United
States runs into the thousands, and more than 1 million people are
injured on the job seriously enough to require time away from work
(Jafari, 2008; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009; Mine Safety and Health
Administration, 2009).

Organized Crime
Organized crime is a business supplying illegal goods or services.
Sometimes crime organizations force people to do business with
them, as when a gang extorts money from shopkeepers for “protection.”

In most cases, however, organized crime involves selling illegal
goods and services—often sex, drugs, or gambling—to willing
buyers.

Organized crime has flourished in the United States for more
than a century. The scope of its operations expanded among immi-
grants who found that this society was not willing to share its oppor-
tunities with them. Thus some ambitious minorities (such as Al
Capone, mentioned earlier) made their own success, especially dur-
ing Prohibition, when the government banned the production and
sale of alcohol.

The Italian Mafia is a well-known example of organized crime.
But other criminal organizations involve African Americans,
Chinese, Colombians, Cubans, Haitians, Nigerians, and Russians,
as well as others of almost every racial and ethnic category. Orga-
nized crime today involves a wide range of activities, from selling
illegal drugs to prostitution to credit card fraud and selling false
identification papers to illegal immigrants (Valdez, 1997; Federal
Bureau of Investigation, 2008).

CRITICAL REVIEW According to social-conflict theory,
a capitalist society’s inequality in wealth and power shapes its
laws and how they are applied. The criminal justice and social
welfare systems thus act as political agents, controlling cate-
gories of people who are a threat to the capitalist system.

Like other approaches to deviance, social-conflict theory
has its critics. First, this approach implies that laws and other cul-
tural norms are created directly by the rich and powerful. At the
very least, this is an oversimplification because the law also pro-
tects workers, consumers, and the environment, sometimes
opposing the interests of corporations and the rich.

Second, social-conflict analysis argues that criminality
springs up only to the extent that a society treats its members
unequally. However, as Durkheim noted, deviance exists in all
societies, whatever the economic system and their degree of
inequality.

The various sociological explanations for crime and other
types of deviance are summarized in the Applying Theory
table.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Define white-collar crime,
corporate crime, and organized crime.

Deviance, Race, and

Gender

What people consider deviant reflects the relative power and privilege
of different categories of people. The following sections offer two
examples: how racial and ethnic hostility motivates hate crimes and
how gender is linked to deviance.

184 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Imagine police holding a street gang, but not its individual
members, responsible for an outbreak of violence. This is what
happens in the case of corporate crime. What does this fact suggest
about the link between crime and power?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

White-collar crime and corporate crime are similar concepts, and
there is not always a clear line separating the two. White-collar
criminals are individuals of high social position who commit crimes
while doing their jobs. Corporate crime occurs when a company
acts in violation of the law.

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Hate Crimes
A hate crime is a criminal act against a person or a person’s property
by an offender motivated by racial or other bias. A hate crime may
express hostility toward someone based on race, religion, ancestry,
sexual orientation, or physical disability. The federal government
recorded 7,783 hate crimes in 2008 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009).

In 1998, people across the country were stunned by the brutal
killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of
Wyoming, by two men filled with hatred toward homosexuals. But
such crimes are far from isolated cases. The National Coalition of
Anti-Violence Programs reports that 40 percent of lesbians and gay
men in the United States say that they have been the victims of hate
violence in their adult lifetimes, and about 90 percent of such
people report experiencing verbal abuse. People who contend with
multiple stigmas, such as gay men of color, are especially likely to be
victimized (Dang & Vianney, 2007; National Coalition of Anti-Violence
Programs, 2010). Yet hate crimes can happen to anyone: In 2008,
more than one of every six hate crimes based on race targeted white
people (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009).

By 2009, forty-five states and the federal government had
enacted legislation that raises penalties for crimes motivated by
hatred. Supporters are gratified, but opponents charge that such laws,
which increase the penalty for a crime based on the attitudes of the
offender, amount to punishing “politically incorrect” thoughts. The
Thinking About Diversity box on page 186 takes a closer look at the
issue of hate crime laws.

The Feminist Perspective: Deviance
and Gender
Virtually every society in the world tries to control the behavior of
women more than men. Historically, our own society has centered
women’s lives around the home. In the United States even today,
women’s opportunities in the workplace, in politics, in athletics, and
in the military are more limited than men’s. In some other parts of
the world, the constraints on women are greater still. In Saudi Ara-
bia, women cannot vote or legally operate motor vehicles; in Iran,
women who expose their hair or wear makeup in public can be
whipped; and not long ago, a Nigerian court convicted a divorced
woman of bearing a child out of wedlock and sentenced her to death
by stoning; her life was later spared out of concern for her child
(Eboh, 2002).

Gender also figures into the theories about deviance noted ear-
lier. For example, Robert Merton’s strain theory defines cultural
goals in terms of financial success. Traditionally at least, this goal
has had more to do with the lives of men, because women have been
socialized to define success in terms of relationships, particularly
marriage and motherhood (E. B. Leonard, 1982). A more woman-
focused theory might recognize the “strain” that results from the
cultural ideal of equality clashing with the reality of gender-based
inequality.

According to labeling theory, gender influences how we define
deviance because people commonly use different standards to judge
the behavior of females and males. Further, because society puts men

Deviance CHAPTER 7 185

Deviance
Structural-Functional
Approach

Symbolic-Interaction
Approach

Social-Conflict
Approach

What is the level of analysis? Macro-level Micro-level Macro-level

What is deviance? What part
does it play in society?

Deviance is a basic part of social
organization.

By defining deviance, society sets
its moral boundaries.

Deviance is part of socially constructed
reality that emerges in interaction.

Deviance comes into being as individuals
label something deviant.

Deviance results from social
inequality.

Norms, including laws, reflect the
interests of powerful members of
society.

What is important about
deviance?

Deviance is universal: It exists in all
societies.

Deviance is variable: Any act or person
may or may not be labeled deviant.

Deviance is political: People with
little power are at high risk of being
labeled deviant.

h APPLYING THEORY h

hate crime a criminal act against a person or a person’s property by an
offender motivated by racial or other bias

The section “Deviance, Race, and Gender” is an extension of
the social-conflict approach, which shows how inequality
based on race and gender can affect the way we understand
deviance.

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186 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

in positions of power over women, men often escape direct respon-
sibility for actions that victimize women. In the past, at least, men
who sexually harassed or assaulted women were labeled only mildly
deviant and sometimes escaped punishment entirely.

By contrast, women who are victimized may have to convince
others—even members of a jury—that they are not to blame for their
own sexual harassment or assault. Research confirms an important
truth: Whether people define a situation as deviant—and, if they do,
who in the situation is defined as deviant—depends on the sex of
both the audience and the actors (King & Clayson, 1988).

Finally, despite its focus on inequality, much social-conflict
analysis does not address the issue of gender. If economic disadvan-
tage is a primary cause of crime, as conflict theory suggests, why do
women (whose economic position is much worse than men’s) com-
mit far fewer crimes than men?

Crime
Crime is the violation of criminal laws enacted by a locality, a state,
or the federal government. All crimes are composed of two distinct

THINKING ABOUT
DIVERSITY: RACE,
CLASS, & GENDER

Hate Crime Laws: Do They Punish
Actions or Attitudes?

On a cool October evening, Todd Mitchell, an
African American teenager, was standing with
some friends in front of their apartment complex
in Kenosha, Wisconsin. They had just seen the
film Mississippi Burning and were fuming over a
scene that showed a white man beating a young
black boy as he knelt in prayer.

“Do you feel hyped up to move on some
white people?” asked Mitchell. Minutes later,
they saw a young white boy walking toward
them on the other side of the street. Mitchell
commanded, “There goes a white boy. Go get
him!” The group swarmed around the youngster,
beating him bloody and leaving him on the
ground in a coma. The attackers took the boy’s
tennis shoes as a trophy.

Police soon arrested the boys and charged
them with the beating. Todd Mitchell went to trial
as the ringleader, and the jury found him guilty of
aggravated battery motivated by racial hatred.
Instead of receiving the usual two-year prison
sentence, Mitchell was sent to jail for four years.

As this case illustrates, hate crime laws pun-
ish a crime more severely if the offender is moti-
vated by bias against some category of people.
Supporters make three arguments in favor of hate
crime legislation. First, the offender’s intentions
are always important in weighing criminal respon-
sibility, so considering hatred as an intention is
nothing new. Second, victims of hate crimes typi-
cally suffer more serious injuries than victims of
crimes with other motives. Third, a crime moti-

vated by racial or other bias is more harmful
because it can inflame an entire community more
than a crime carried out, say, for money.

Critics counter that while some hate crime
cases involve hard-core racism, most are impul-

sive acts by young people. Even more important,
critics maintain, hate crime laws are a threat to
First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
Hate crime laws allow courts to sentence offend-
ers not just for their actions but also for their atti-
tudes. As the Harvard University law professor
Alan Dershowitz cautions, “As much as I hate
bigotry, I fear much more the Court attempting to
control the minds of citizens.” In short, according
to critics, hate crime laws open the door to pun-
ishing beliefs rather than behavior.

In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
sentence handed down to Todd Mitchell. In a
unanimous decision, the justices reaffirmed that
the government should not punish an individ-
ual’s beliefs. But, they reasoned, a belief is no
longer protected when it becomes the motive
for a crime.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Do you think crimes motivated by hate are
more harmful than those motivated by, say,
greed? Why or why not?

2. Do you think minorities such as African
Americans should be subject to the same
hate crime laws as white people? Why or
why not?

3. On balance, do you favor or oppose hate
crime laws? Why?

Sources: Terry (1993), A. Sullivan (2002), and Hartocollis (2007).

Do you think this example of vandalism should
be prosecuted as a hate crime? In other
words, should the punishment be more severe
than if the spray painting were just “normal”
graffiti? Why or why not?

Why do you think that women are much less likely than men
to be arrested for a serious crime?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

crimes against the person (violent crimes) crimes that direct violence or the
threat of violence against others

crimes against property (property crimes) crimes that involve theft of money
or property belonging to others

victimless crimes violations of law in which there are no obvious victims

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Deviance CHAPTER 7 187

elements: the act itself (or in some cases, a failure to do what the law
requires) and criminal intent (in legal terminology, mens rea, or “guilty
mind”). Intent is a matter of degree, ranging from willful conduct to
negligence. Someone who is negligent does not set out deliberately to
hurt anyone but acts (or fails to act) in a way that results in harm.
Prosecutors weigh the degree of intent in determining whether, for
example, to charge someone with first-degree murder, second-degree
murder, or negligent manslaughter. Alternatively, they may consider
a killing justifiable, as in self-defense.

Types of Crime
In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gath-
ers information on criminal offenses and regularly reports the results
in a publication called Crime in the United States. Two major types of
crime make up the FBI “crime index.”

Crimes against the person, also referred to as violent crimes, are
crimes that direct violence or the threat of violence against others. Vio-
lent crimes include murder and manslaughter (legally defined as “the
willful killing of one human being by another”), aggravated assault
(“an unlawful attack by one person on another for the purpose of
inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury”), forcible rape (“the car-
nal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will”), and robbery
(“taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, cus-
tody, or control of a person or persons, by force or threat of force or
violence and/or putting the victim in fear”). National Map 7–1 shows
the risk of violent crime for all the counties in the United States.

Crimes against property, also referred to as property crimes, are
crimes that involve theft of money or property belonging to others. Prop-
erty crimes include burglary (“the unlawful entry of a structure to
commit a [serious crime] or a theft”), larceny-theft (“the unlawful

taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the pos-
session of another”), motor vehicle theft (“the theft or attempted
theft of a motor vehicle”), and arson (“any willful or malicious burn-
ing or attempt to burn the personal property of another”).

A third category of offenses, not included in major crime
indexes, is victimless crimes, violations of law in which there are no
obvious victims. Also called crimes without complaint, they include
illegal drug use, prostitution, and gambling. The term “victimless
crime” is misleading, however. How victimless is a crime when young
drug users embark on a life of crime to support their drug habit?
What about a pregnant woman who, by smoking crack, permanently
harms her baby? Or a gambler who loses the money needed to sup-
port himself and his family? Perhaps it is more correct to say that
people who commit such crimes are both offenders and victims.

Because public views of victimless crime vary greatly, laws dif-
fer from place to place. Although gambling and prostitution are legal
in only limited areas, both activities are common across the country.

Criminal Statistics
Statistics gathered by the FBI show crime rates rising from 1960 to
1990 and then declining after that. Even so, police count more than
11 million serious crimes each year. Figure 7–2 on page 188 shows
the trends for various serious crimes over the past four decades.

Always read crime statistics with caution, however, because they
include only crimes known to the police. Almost all murders are
reported, but other assaults—especially between people who know
one another—often are not. Police records include an even smaller
proportion of property crimes, especially when the losses are small.

Researchers check official crime statistics by conducting
victimization surveys, in which they ask a representative sample of

Risk of Violent Crime
Above average
Average
Below average

ALASKA

HAWAII

ARIZONA

NEVADA

CALIFORNIA

OREGON

WASHINGTON

IDAHO

MONTANA NORTH
DAKOTA MINNESOTA

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

WYOMING

COLORADO

NEW
MEXICO

TEXAS

LOUISIANA

ARKANSAS

OKLAHOMA

KANSAS
MISSOURI

IOWA

WISCONSIN
MICHIGAN

ILLINOIS
INDIANA OHIO

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

MISSISSIPPI

ALABAMA

GEORGIA

SOUTH
CAROLINA

NORTH
CAROLINA

VIRGINIA

D.C.
WEST

VIRGINIA

DELAWARE

NEW JERSEY

MARYLAND

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW
YORK

CONNECTICUT
RHODE ISLAND

MASSACHUSETTS

MAINE
VERMONT

NEW HAMPSHIRE

FLORIDA

UTAH

Serge Shuman, who lives in Mecklenburg
County, North Carolina, knows many people
who have been victims of crime and avoids
going out at night.

Sam Pearson, who lives in
Renville County, North Dakota,
rarely locks his doors when he
leaves the house.

Seeing Ourselves
NATIONAL MAP 7–1
The Risk of Violent Crime across the United States

This map shows the risk of becoming a victim of violent crime. In
general, the risk is highest in low-income, rural counties that have
a large population of men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-
four. After reading this section of the text, see whether you can
explain this pattern.

Source: CAP Index (2009).

Explore on mysoclab.com

the share of the population in prison in
your local community and in counties across the
United States on mysoclab.com

Explore

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people about their experiences with crime. Victimization surveys
carried out in 2008 showed that the actual number of serious crimes
was more than twice as high as police reports indicate (Rand, 2009).

The Street Criminal: A Profile
Using various government crime reports, we can draw a general
description of the categories of people most likely to be arrested for
crimes.

Gender

Although each sex makes up roughly half the population, police col-
lared males in 65.2 percent of all property crime arrests in 2008; the
other 34.8 percent of arrests involved women. In other words, men are
arrested almost twice as often as women for property crimes. In the
case of violent crimes, the difference is even greater, with 81.7 percent
of arrests involving males and just 18.3 percent females (more than
a four-to-one ratio).

188 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

1960 1970 1980 1990

Recorded Rate of Property Crimes

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

4,500

5,000

5,500

Motor vehicle theft

Burglary

Larceny-theft

All property crimes

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

550

600

650

700

750

800

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 20102000 2010

Recorded Rate of Violent Crimes

C
ri

m
es

p
er

1
00

,0
00

P
eo

p
le

Forcible rape

Robbery

Aggravated assault

All violent crimes

Murder and
nonnegligent
manslaughter

FIGURE 7–2 Crime Rates in the United States, 1960–2008
The graphs show the rates for various violent crimes and property crimes during recent decades. Since about 1990,
the trend has been downward.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (2009).

Do you think a student who downloads music in violation of
the law is guilty of theft? Why or why not?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

The profile of the street criminal is based on arrest data and
not on convictions in a court of law. This is because the data
made available by the FBI are based on arrests.

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Deviance CHAPTER 7 189

It may be that law enforcement officials are reluctant to define
women as criminals. In global perspective, the greatest gender differ-
ence in crime rates occurs in societies that most severely limit the
opportunities of women. In the United States, the difference in arrest
rates for women and men has been narrowing, which probably indi-
cates increasing gender equality in our society. Between 1999 and
2008, there was a 11.6 percent increase in arrests of women and a
3.1 percent drop in arrests of men (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009).

Age

Official crime rates rise sharply during adolescence, peak in the late
teens, and fall as people get older. People between the ages of fifteen
and twenty-four represent just 14 percent of the U.S. population, but
in 2008, they accounted for 41.5 percent of all arrests for violent
crimes and 48.3 percent of arrests for property crimes.

Social Class

The FBI does not assess the social class of arrested persons, so no sta-
tistical data of the kind given for age and gender are available. But
research has long indicated that street crime is more widespread
among people of lower social position (Thornberry & Farnsworth,
1982; Wolfgang, Thornberry, & Figlio, 1987).

Yet the connection between class and crime is more complicated
than it appears on the surface. For one thing, many people see the
poor as less worthy than the rich, whose wealth and power confer
“respectability” (Tittle, Villemez, & Smith, 1978; Elias, 1986). And
although crime—especially violent crime—is a serious problem in
the poorest inner-city communities of the United States, most of
these crimes are committed by a few hard-core offenders. The major-
ity of people in inner-city neighborhoods have no criminal record at
all (Wolfgang, Figlio, & Sellin, 1972; Elliott & Ageton, 1980; Harries,
1990).

The connection between social standing and criminality also
depends on the type of crime. If we expand our definition of crime
beyond street offenses to include white-collar crime, the “common
criminal” suddenly looks much more affluent and may live in a $100
million home. Go to mysoclab.com

Race and Ethnicity

Both race and ethnicity are strongly linked to crime rates, although
the reasons are many and complex. Official statistics indicate that
69.2 percent of arrests for index crimes in 2008 involved white peo-
ple. However, arrests of African Americans are higher in proportion
to their share of the general population. African Americans make up
12.8 percent of the population of the United States but account for
30.1 percent of the arrests for property crimes (versus 67.4 percent
for whites) and 39.4 percent of arrests for violent crimes (versus
58.3 percent for whites) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009).

There are several reasons for the disproportionate number of
arrests among African Americans. First, in the United States, race is
closely linked to social standing, which, as already explained, affects
the likelihood of engaging in street crimes. Many poor people living
in the midst of wealth come to see society as unjust and therefore
are more likely to turn to crime to get their share (Blau & Blau, 1982;
E. Anderson, 1994; Martinez, 1996).

Second, black and white family patterns differ: Seventy-two per-
cent of non-Hispanic black children (compared with 28 percent of
non-Hispanic white children) are born to single mothers. There are
two risks associated with single parenting: Children get less supervi-
sion, and they are at greater risk of living in poverty. With more than
one-third of African American children growing up in poor families
(compared with one in nine white children), no one should be
surprised at proportionately higher crime rates for African Americans
(Courtwright, 1996; Jacobs & Helms, 1996; Hamilton, Martin, and
Ventura, 2009; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009).

Third, prejudice prompts white police to arrest black people
more readily and leads citizens to report African Americans more
willingly, so people of color are overly criminalized (Chiricos, McEn-
tire, & Gertz, 2001; Quillian & Pager, 2001; Demuth & Steffensmeier,
2004).

Fourth, remember that the official crime index does not include
arrests for offenses ranging from drunk driving to white-collar vio-
lations. This omission contributes to the view of the typical criminal

Read on mysoclab.com

“You look like this sketch of someone who’s thinking about committing a crime.”

“Race and Class in the Criminal Justice

System” by David Cole on mysoclab.com
Read

Go to the Multimedia Library at mysoclab.com
to watch the ABC 20/20 video “Justice and
Privilege”

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as a person of color. If we broaden our definition of crime to include
drunk driving, business fraud, embezzlement, stock swindles, and
cheating on income tax returns, the proportion of white criminals
rises dramatically.

Keep in mind, too, that categories of people with high arrest
rates are also at higher risk of being victims of crime. In the United
States, for example, African Americans are six times as likely to die
as a result of homicide as white people (Rogers et al., 2001; Heron
et al., 2009).

Finally, some categories of the population have unusually low
rates of arrest. People of Asian descent, who account for 4.5 percent
of the population, figure in only 1.1 percent of all arrests. As Chap-
ter 11 (“Race and Ethnicity”) explains, Asian Americans enjoy higher
than average educational achievement and income. Also, Asian Amer-
ican culture emphasizes family solidarity and discipline, both of
which keep criminality down.

Crime in Global Perspective
By world standards, the U.S. crime rate is high. Although recent crime
trends are downward, there were 16,272 murders in this country in
2008, which amounts to one every half hour around the clock. In
large cities such as New York, never does a week go by without some-
one being killed.

The rate of violent crime (but not property crime) in the United
States is several times higher than in Europe. The contrast is even
greater between our country and the nations of Asia, including India
and Japan, where violent and property crime rates are among the
lowest in the world.

Elliott Currie (1985) suggests that crime arises from our cul-
ture’s emphasis on individual economic success, often at the expense
of strong families and neighborhoods. The United States also has
extraordinary cultural diversity—a result of centuries of immigra-
tion—that can lead to conflict. In addition, economic inequality is
higher in this country than in most other high-income nations. Our
society’s relatively weak social fabric, combined with considerable
frustration among the poor, increases the level of criminal behavior.

Another factor contributing to violence in the United States is
extensive private ownership of guns. About two-thirds of murder
victims in the United States die from shootings. The U.S. rate of
handgun homicides is about five times higher than in Canada, a
country that strictly limits handgun ownership (Federal Bureau of
Investigation, 2009; Statistics Canada, 2009).

Surveys show that about one-third of U.S. households have at least
one gun. In fact, there are more guns (about 283 million) than adults
in this country, and 40 percent of these weapons are handguns, which
are commonly used in violent crimes. In large part, gun ownership
reflects people’s fear of crime, yet easy availability of guns in this coun-
try makes crime more deadly (Brady Campaign, 2008; NORC, 2009).

Supporters of gun control claim that restricting gun ownership
would reduce the number of murders in the United States. For exam-
ple, the number of murders each year in Canada, where the law pre-
vents most people from owning guns, is about the same as the
number of murders in just the cities of New York and Newark in this
country. But as critics of gun control point out, laws regulating gun
ownership do not keep guns out of the hands of criminals, who
almost always obtain guns illegally. They also claim that gun control
is no magic bullet in the war on crime: The number of people in the
United States killed each year by knives alone is three times the num-
ber of Canadians killed by weapons of all kinds (J. D. Wright, 1995;
Munroe, 2007; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009; Statistics
Canada, 2009).

By the end of 2008, gun sales to private citizens were up sharply,
reflecting the fears on the part of many gun owners that the Obama
administration would act to curtail gun ownership. Changes in the law
may or may not occur in the next few years, but debate over the con-
sequences of widespread gun ownership will continue (Potter, 2008).

December 24–25, traveling through Peru. In
Lima, Peru’s capital city, the concern with crime is obvi-
ous. Almost every house is fortified with gates, barbed
wire, or broken glass embedded in cement at the top of

a wall. Private security forces are everywhere in the rich areas
along the coast, where we find the embassies, expensive hotels,
and the international airport.

The picture is very different as we pass through small vil-
lages high in the Andes to the east. The same families have
lived in these communities for generations, and people know
one another. No gates or fences here. And we’ve seen only one
police car all afternoon.

Crime rates are high in some of the largest cities of the world,
such as Manila, Philippines, and São Paulo, Brazil, which have rapid
population growth and millions of desperately poor people. Outside
of big cities, however, the traditional character of low-income soci-
eties and their strong family structure allow local communities to
control crime informally.

Some types of crime have always been multinational, such as ter-
rorism, espionage, and arms dealing. But today, the globalization we
are experiencing on many fronts also extends to crime. A case in point
is the illegal drug trade. In part, the problem of illegal drugs in the
United States is a demand issue. That is, the demand for cocaine and
other drugs in this country is high, with high rates of addiction and
many young people who are willing to risk arrest or even violent death
for a chance to get rich in the drug trade. But the supply side of the
issue is just as important. In the South American nation of Colom-
bia, at least 20 percent of the people depend on cocaine production

190 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Making the Grade

Do you think stricter gun control laws would lower the level of
deadly violence in the United States? Why or why not?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday LifeRemember that the profile of a criminal depends on the type of

crime. Street crime involves a larger share of lower-income
people; corporate crime involves mostly high-income people.
With regard to race, most street crime is committed by whites.

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for their livelihood. Not only is cocaine Colombia’s most profitable
export, but it outsells all other exports combined, including coffee.
Clearly, then, drug dealing and many other crimes are closely related
to social conditions both in this country and elsewhere.

Different countries have different strategies for dealing with
crime. The use of capital punishment (the death penalty) is one

example. According to Amnesty International (2010b), five nations
account for 93 percent of the world’s executions carried out by gov-
ernments. Global Map 7–1 shows which countries currently use cap-
ital punishment. The global trend is toward abolishing the death
penalty: Amnesty International (2010a) reports that since 1985, more
than sixty nations have ended this practice.

Deviance CHAPTER 7 191

A N T A R C T I C A

TUVALU

WESTERN
SAMOA

FIJI

TONGA
NEW CALEDONIA

NEW
ZEALAND

AUSTRALIA

SOLOMON
ISLANDS

EAST TIMOR

PAPUA
NEW GUINEA

VANUATU

KIRIBATI

MARSHALL
ISLANDSFEDERATED STATES

OF MICRONESIA

NAURU

PALAU

JAPAN

N. KOREA
S. KOREA

KAZAKHSTAN

MONGOLIA
UZBEKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

OMAN

PA
KI

ST
A

GH
AN

IS
TA

N
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC

OF CHINA

NEPAL BHUTAN

TAJIKISTAN

IRAN

MALAYSIA

BRUNEI

I N D O N E S I A

SINGAPORE

CAMBODIA
SRI
LANKA

VIETNAM

PHILIPPINES

TAIWAN, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

INDIA

BANGLADESH
LAOS

THAILAND

M
YA

N
M

A
R

MAURITIUS

MADAGASCAR

SOUTH

AFRICA LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

NAMIBIA

BOTSWANA

MOZAMBIQUE

ZIMBABWE

ZAMBIA MALAWI

MALDIVES

SEYCHELLES

COMOROS

TANZANIA

SÃO TOMÉ
& PRINCIPE BURUNDI

KENYA

ANGOLA

GABON

CONGO

EQUATORIAL
GUINEA

UGANDA
CAMEROON

SOMALIA

CENT.
AFR.
REP.

ETHIOPIA

DJIBOUTI

SUDAN
CHAD YEM

KUWAIT

N
IG

ER
IA

NIGER

BENIN

IVORY
COAST

TOGO

MAURITANIA

SENEGAL

GAMBIA

GUINEA-BISSAU
GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA

G
H

A
N

M
A

L
I

BURKINA
FASO

CAPE VERDE

SAUDI
ARABIA

EGYPT

LIBYA

U.A.E.

ALGERIA
WESTERN

SAHARA
M

O
RO

CC
O

ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA

ALB.

FINLAND
SWEDEN

ST. VINCENT

M
E X

I C
O

BAHAMAS

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

ST. LUCIA
BARBADOS

GRENADA

GUYANA

FRENCH GUIANA
SURINAME

B
O

LIV
IA

R
A

G
U

A
R

G
E

N
T

I N
A

C
O

L
O

M
B

I A

B R A Z I L

P
E R

URUGUAY

CHILE

ECUADOR

HAITIJAMAICA

NICARAGUA

CUBA

GUATEMALA

EL SALVADOR

BELIZE
HONDURAS

COSTA RICA

PANAMA
VENEZUELA

U.S.
U.S.

UNITED STATES
OF

AMERICA

C A N A D A

ICELAND

GREENLAND
NORWAY

DENMARK

GREAT
BRITAIN

IRELAND

MALTA

JORDAN

IRAQ

BAHRAIN
QATAR

ISRAEL
LEBANON

SYRIA

TURKEY
TURKMENISTAN

AZERBAIJAN

ARMENIA

GEORGIA

UKRAINE
MOLDOVA

BELARUS

GREECE

POLAND

ROM.
HUNG.

CYPRUS
TUNISIA

PORTUGAL

GERM.NETH.
BEL.

LUX.
SWITZ.

ITALYFRANCE

AUS.

SP
AI

HONG KONG
MACAO

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

0
20
40
60

1801601401201008060402002060 4080100120140160

0
20
40
60

RWANDA

DEM.
REP.

OF THE
CONGO

MAC.

CZECH
REP. SLOV.

SLOVENIA
CROATIA

BOSNIA-HERZ.

ERITREA

Death Penalty

Death penalty

Death penalty only
for military crimes

No death penalty

Not abolished, but
death penalty inactive

No data

ANTIGUA & BARBUDA
DOMINICA

DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC
PUERTO RICO

SERBIA

ST. KITTS & NEVIS

China executes thousands of people annually,
with about 21/2 times the number of executions
as the entire rest of the world combined.

Although the United States remains one of the few
high-income nations to carry out executions, only
52 people were put to death in 2009.

BUL.
MONT.
KOSOVO

Window on the World
GLOBAL MAP 7–1 Capital Punishment in Global Perspective

The map identifies fifty-eight countries in which the law allows the death penalty for ordinary crimes; in nine more,
the death penalty is reserved for exceptional crimes under military law or during times of war. The death penalty
does not exist in ninety-five countries; in thirty-five more, although the death penalty remains in law, no execution
has taken place in more than ten years. Compare rich and poor nations: What general pattern do you see? In what
way are the United States and Japan exceptions to this pattern?

Source: Amnesty International (2010a).

The U.S. Criminal
Justice System
The criminal justice system is a society’s formal response to crime.
We shall briefly examine the key elements of the U.S. criminal jus-
tice system: police, the courts, and the system of punishment and
corrections. First, however, we must understand an important prin-
ciple that underlies the entire system, the idea of due process.

Due Process
Due process is a simple but very important idea: The criminal justice
system must operate according to law. Criminal law is grounded in the

first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution—known as the Bill of
Rights—adopted by Congress in 1791. The Constitution offers vari-
ous protections to any person charged with a crime. Among these are
the right to counsel, the right to refuse to testify against oneself, and
the right to confront all accusers, as well as freedom from being tried
twice for the same crime and freedom from being “deprived of life,
liberty, or property without due process of law.” Furthermore, the
Constitution gives all people the right to a speedy and public trial by
jury and freedom from excessive bail and from “cruel and unusual”
punishment.

In general terms, the concept of due process means that anyone
charged with a crime must receive (1) fair notice of the proceedings,
(2) a hearing on the charges conducted according to law and with the
ability to present a defense, and (3) a judge or jury that weighs evi-
dence impartially (Inciardi, 2000).

Due process limits the power of government, with an eye toward
this nation’s cultural support of individual rights and freedoms.
Deciding exactly how far government can go makes up much of the
work of the judicial system, especially the U.S. Supreme Court.

Police
The police generally serve as the point of contact between a popula-
tion and the criminal justice system. In principle, the police main-
tain public order by enforcing the law. Of course, there is only so
much that 708,569 full-time police officers across the United States
can do to monitor the activities of more than 300 million people. As
a result, the police use a great deal of personal judgment in deciding
which situations warrant their attention and how to handle them.
Police also face danger on a daily basis. In most years, more than 100 U.S.
police officers are killed in the line of duty.

Given these facts, how do police officers carry out their duties?
In a study of police behavior in five cities, Douglas Smith and Christy
Visher (1981; D. A. Smith, 1987) concluded that because they must
act swiftly, police quickly size up situations in terms of six factors.
First, the more serious they think the situation is, the more likely
they are to make an arrest. Second, police take account of the victim’s
wishes in deciding whether or not to make an arrest. Third, the odds
of arrest go up the more uncooperative a suspect is. Fourth, police
are more likely to take into custody someone they have arrested
before, presumably because this suggests guilt. Fifth, the presence of
bystanders increases the chances of arrest. According to Smith and
Visher, the presence of observers prompts police to take stronger
control of a situation, if only to move the encounter from the street
(the suspect’s turf) to the police department (where law officers have
the edge). Sixth, all else being equal, police are more likely to arrest
people of color than to arrest whites, perceiving people of African
or Latino descent as either more dangerous or more likely to be guilty.

192 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

Police must be allowed discretion if they are to handle effectively the many
different situations they face every day. At the same time, it is important
that the police treat people fairly. Here we see a police officer deciding
whether or not to charge a young woman with driving while intoxicated.
What factors do you think enter into this decision?

Due process—the idea that the criminal justice system
should operate under the rule of law—guides the actions of
police, court officials, and corrections officers.

Making the Grade

plea bargaining a legal negotiation in which a prosecutor
reduces a charge in exchange for a defendant’s guilty plea

Courts
After arrest, a court determines a suspect’s guilt or inno-
cence. In principle, U.S. courts rely on an adversarial process
involving attorneys—one representing the defendant and
another the state—in the presence of a judge who monitors
legal procedures.

In practice, however, about 90 percent of criminal cases
are resolved before court appearance through plea bargain-
ing, a legal negotiation in which a prosecutor reduces a charge
in exchange for a defendant’s guilty plea. For example, the
state may offer a defendant charged with burglary a lesser
charge, perhaps possession of burglary tools, in exchange
for a guilty plea.

Plea bargaining is widespread because it spares the sys-
tem the time and expense of trials. A trial is usually unnec-
essary if there is little disagreement as to the facts of the
case. Moreover, because of the high number of cases enter-
ing the system, prosecutors could not possibly bring every
case to trial even if they wanted to. By quickly resolving
most of their work, then, the courts can devote their
resources to the most important cases.

But plea bargaining pressures defendants (who are pre-
sumed innocent) to plead guilty. A person can exercise the
right to a trial, but only at the risk of receiving a more severe
sentence if found guilty. Furthermore, low-income defendants must
often rely on a public defender—typically an overworked and under-
paid attorney who may devote little time to even the most serious
cases (Novak, 1999). Plea bargaining may be efficient, but it under-
cuts both the adversarial process and the rights of defendants.

Punishment

In 2009, a man with a long criminal record who was out on bail on
charges of raping a child walked into a coffee shop in Parkland, Wash-
ington, and shot and killed four uniformed police officers as they
were doing “paperwork” on their laptops. Two days later, a massive
manhunt ended when the man was killed in a confrontation with
another police officer (MSNBC, 2009).

Such cases force us to wonder about the reasons that drive some
people to deadly violence and also to ask how a society should
respond to such acts. In the case of the Parkland shootings, the crime
was resolved through gunfire. But typically, of course, a suspect is
apprehended and put on trial. If found guilty, the next step is pun-
ishment.

What does a society gain through the punishment of wrongdo-
ers? Scholars answer with four basic reasons, which are described in
the following sections: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and
societal protection.

Retribution

The oldest justification for punishment is to satisfy a society’s need for
retribution, an act of moral vengeance by which society makes the
offender suffer as much as the suffering caused by the crime. Retribution
rests on the view that society exists in a moral balance. When crimi-
nality upsets this balance, punishment in equal measure restores the
moral order, as suggested in the ancient code calling for “an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

In the Middle Ages, most people viewed crime as sin—an offense
against God as well as society—that required a harsh response.
Although critics point out that retribution does little to reform the
offender, many people today still consider vengeance reason enough
for punishment.

Deterrence

A second justification for punishment is deterrence, the attempt to dis-
courage criminality through the use of punishment. Deterrence is based
on the eighteenth-century Enlightenment idea that as calculating and
rational creatures, humans will not break the law if they think that the
pain of the punishment will outweigh the pleasure of the crime.

Deterrence emerged as a reform measure in response to harsh
punishments based on retribution. Why put someone to death for
stealing if theft can be discouraged by a prison sentence? As the con-
cept of deterrence gained acceptance in industrial societies, execution

Deviance CHAPTER 7 193

Many of our most popular television shows, including The Good Wife, show dedicated
and skillful people moving our judicial system forward. We like to think that the court
system carefully weighs the guilt and innocence of every person accused of a crime.
As explained below, however, only 10 percent of criminal cases are actually resolved
through a formal trial.

Four Justifications for Punishment

deterrence the attempt to discourage
criminality through the use of punishment

retribution an act of moral vengeance by
which society makes the offender suffer as
much as the suffering caused by the crime

societal protection (p. 194) rendering an
offender incapable of further offenses
temporarily through imprisonment or
permanently by execution

rehabilitation (p. 194) a program for reforming
the offender to prevent later offenses

and physical mutilation of criminals were replaced by milder forms
of punishment such as imprisonment.

Punishment may deter crime in two ways. Specific deterrence
convinces an individual offender that crime does not pay. Through
general deterrence, punishing one person serves as an example to
others.

Rehabilitation

The third justification for punishment, rehabilitation, is a program
for reforming the offender to prevent later offenses. Rehabilitation arose
along with the social sciences in the nineteenth century. Since then,
sociologists have claimed that crime and other deviance spring from
a social environment marked by poverty or lack of parental supervi-
sion. Logically, then, if offenders learn to be deviant, they can also learn
to obey the rules; the key is controlling the environment. Reformatories
or houses of correction provided a controlled setting where people could
learn proper behavior (recall the description of total institutions in
Chapter 3, “Socialization: From Infancy to Old Age”).

Like deterrence, rehabilitation motivates the offender to con-
form. In contrast to deterrence and retribution, which simply make
the offender suffer, rehabilitation encourages constructive improve-
ment. Unlike retribution, which demands that the punishment fit
the crime, rehabilitation tailors treatment to each offender. Thus
identical crimes would prompt similar acts of retribution but dif-
ferent rehabilitation programs. Go to mysoclab.com

Societal Protection

A final justification for punishment is societal protection, rendering
an offender incapable of further offenses temporarily through impris-
onment or permanently by execution. Like deterrence, societal protec-
tion is a rational approach to punishment intended to protect society
from crime.

In 2010, some 2.4 million people were in prison in the United
States. Although the crime rate has gone down since 1980, the num-
ber of offenders locked up has increased nearly fivefold. This rise in
the prison population reflects both tougher public attitudes toward
crime and an increasing number of arrests for drug-related crimes. As
a result, the United States now imprisons a larger share of its popu-
lation than any other country in the world (Pew Center on the States,
2008; Sentencing Project, 2008; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010).

CRITICAL REVIEW The Summing Up table reviews the
four justifications for punishment. However, an accurate assess-
ment of the consequences of punishment is no simple task.

The value of retribution lies in Durkheim’s claim that pun-
ishing the deviant person increases society’s moral awareness.
For this reason, punishment was traditionally a public event.
Although the last public execution in this country took place in
Kentucky more than seventy years ago, today’s mass media
ensure public awareness of executions carried out inside prison
walls (Kittrie, 1971).

194 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

SUMMING UP

Four Justifications for Punishment

Retribution The oldest justification for punishment.

Punishment is society’s revenge for a moral wrong.

In principle, punishment should be equal in severity to the crime itself.

Deterrence An early modern approach.

Crime is considered social disruption, which society acts to control.

People are viewed as rational and self-interested; deterrence works because the pain of punishment outweighs the pleasure of crime.

Rehabilitation A modern strategy linked to the development of social sciences.

Crime and other deviance are viewed as the result of social problems (such as poverty) or personal problems (such as mental illness).

Social conditions are improved; treatment is tailored to the offender’s condition.

Societal protection A modern approach easier to carry out than rehabilitation.

Even if society is unable or unwilling to rehabilitate offenders or reform social conditions, people are protected by the imprisonment or execution of the offender.

Carefully review the Summing Up table below to ensure that
you understand the four justifications for punishment.

Making the Grade Go to the Multimedia Library at mysoclab.com
to watch the ABC Primetime video “Juvenile
Corrections”

Does punishment deter crime? Despite our extensive use
of punishment, our society has a high rate of criminal
recidivism, later offenses by people previously convicted of
crimes. A government study reported that two-thirds of state
prison inmates released from jail in 1994 were rearrested for a
serious crime within three years. Other research tells us that
about three-fourths of state prisoners have been incarcerated
before (DeFina & Arvanites, 2002; Langan & Levin, 2002). So
does punishment really deter crime? Fewer than one-half of all
crimes are known to police, and of these, only about one in five
results in an arrest. Most crimes, therefore, go unpunished, lead-
ing us to conclude, perhaps, that the old saying “crime doesn’t
pay” may not be entirely true.

Prisons provide short-term societal protection by keeping
offenders off the streets, but they do little to reshape attitudes
or behavior in the long term (Carlson, 1976; R. A. Wright, 1994).
Perhaps rehabilitation is an unrealistic expectation, because
according to Sutherland’s theory of differential association, locking
up criminals together for years probably strengthens criminal
attitudes and skills. Imprisonment also breaks whatever social
ties inmates may have in the outside world, which, following
Hirschi’s control theory, makes inmates likely to commit more
crimes upon release.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING What are society’s four
justifications for punishment? Does sending offenders to prison
accomplish each of them? How?

The Death Penalty
Perhaps the most controversial issue involving punishment is the
death penalty. From 1993 through 2009, more than 3,500 people were
sentenced to death in U.S. courts; 1,000 executions were carried out.
In thirty-six states, the law allows the state to execute offenders con-
victed of very serious crimes such as first-degree murder. But while a
majority of states do permit capital punishment, only a few states are
likely to carry out executions. Across the United States, half of the
3,207 people on death row at the end of 2008 were in just four states:
California, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania (U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2010).

Opponents of capital punishment point to research suggesting
that the death penalty has limited value as a crime deterrent. Coun-
tries such as Canada, where the death penalty has been abolished,
have not seen a rise in the number of murders. Critics also point out
that the United States is the only Western, high-income nation that
routinely executes offenders. As public concern about the death
penalty has increased, the use of capital punishment declined from
as many as ninety-eight executions in 1999 to thirty-seven in 2008
but rising again in 2009 to fifty-two.

Public opinion surveys reveal that the share of U.S. adults who
claim to support the death penalty as a punishment for murder
remains high (62 percent) and has been fairly stable over time
(NORC, 2009:214). College students hold about the same attitudes
as everyone else, with about two-thirds of first-year students express-
ing support for the death penalty (Pryor et al., 2008).

But judges, criminal prosecutors, and members of trial juries
are less and less likely to call for the death penalty. One reason is that
because the crime rate has come down in recent years, the public
now has less fear of crime and is less interested in applying the most
severe punishment.

A second reason is public concern that the death penalty may
be applied unjustly. The analysis of DNA evidence—a recent
advance—from old crime scenes has shown that many people were
wrongly convicted of a crime. Across the country, between 1975 and
2010, at least 137 people who had been sentenced to death were
released from death row after new DNA evidence demonstrated
their innocence. Such findings were one reason that in 2000, the
governor of Illinois stated that he could no longer support the death
penalty, leading him to commute the death sentences of every per-
son on that state’s death row (S. Levine, 2003; Death Penalty Infor-
mation Center, 2010).

Deviance CHAPTER 7 195

To increase the power of punishment to deter crime, capital punishment
was long carried out in public. Here is a photograph from the last public
execution in the United States, with twenty-two-year-old Rainey Bethea
standing on the scaffold moments from death in Owensboro, Kentucky, on
August 16, 1937. Children as well as adults were in the crowd. Now that
the mass media report the story of executions across the country, states
carry out capital punishment behind closed doors.

criminal recidivism later offenses by people previously convicted of crimes

Although there has been little change in public support for
the death penalty as recorded in surveys, the long-term trend
is toward fewer executions. Can you suggest reasons for this
pattern?

A third reason for the decline in the use of the death penalty is
that more states now permit judges and juries to sentence serious
offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Such pun-
ishment offers to protect society from dangerous criminals who can
be “put away” forever without requiring an execution.

Fourth and finally, many states now shy away from capital pun-
ishment because of the high cost of prosecuting capital cases. Death
penalty cases require more legal work and demand superior defense
lawyers, often at public expense. In addition, such cases commonly
include testimony by various paid “experts,” including physicians
and psychiatrists, which also runs up the costs of trial. Then there is
the cost of many appeals that almost always follow a conviction lead-
ing to the sentence of death. When all these factors are put together,
the cost of a death penalty case typically exceeds the cost of sending
an offender to prison for life. So it is easy to see why states often
choose not to seek the death penalty. One accounting, for example,
reveals that the state of New Jersey has been spending more than $10
million a year prosecuting death penalty cases that have yet to result
in a single execution (Thomas & Brant, 2007).

Organizations opposed to the death penalty are challenging this
punishment in court. In 2008, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court
upheld the use of lethal injection against the charge that this proce-
dure amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, which would be
unconstitutional. There is no indication at present that the United
States will end the use of the death penalty. But the trend is away
from this type of punishment.

Community-Based Corrections
Prison is at the center of our system of corrections. Prisons keep con-
victed criminals off the streets. The thought of prison probably deters
many people from committing serious crime. But the evidence sug-
gests that locking people up does little to rehabilitate most offend-
ers. Further, prisons are expensive, costing more than $25,000 per
year to support each inmate, in addition to the high cost of building
the facilities.

A recent alternative to prison that has been adopted by many
cities and states across the country is community-based correc-
tions, correctional programs operating within society at large rather
than behind prison walls. Community-based corrections have three
main advantages: They reduce costs, they reduce overcrowding in
prisons, and they allow for supervision of convicts while eliminat-
ing the hardships of prison life and the stigma that accompanies
going to jail. In general, the idea of community-based corrections is
not so much to punish as to reform; such programs are therefore
usually offered to individuals who have committed less serious
offenses and who appear to be good prospects for avoiding future
criminal violations (Inciardi, 2000).

Probation

One form of community-based corrections is probation, a policy of
permitting a convicted offender to remain in the community under
conditions imposed by a court, including regular supervision. Courts
may require that a probationer receive counseling, attend a drug treat-
ment program, hold a job, avoid associating with “known criminals,”
or anything else a judge thinks is appropriate. Typically, a probationer
must check in with an officer of the court (the probation officer) on
a regular schedule to make sure the guidelines are being followed.
Should the probationer fail to live up to the conditions set by the
court or commit a new offense, the court may revoke probation and
send the offender to jail.

Shock Probation

A related strategy is shock probation, a policy by which a judge orders
a convicted offender to prison for a short time and then suspends the
remainder of the sentence in favor of probation. Shock probation is
thus a mix of prison and probation that is intended to impress on the
offender the seriousness of the situation while still withholding full-
scale imprisonment. In some cases, shock probation takes place in a
special “boot camp” facility where offenders might spend up to three
months in a military-style setting intended to teach discipline and
respect for authority (Cole & Smith, 2002).

Parole

Parole is a policy of releasing inmates from prison to serve the
remainder of their sentences in the local community under the
supervision of a parole officer. Although courts may sometimes sen-
tence an offender to prison without the possibility of parole, most
other inmates become eligible for parole after serving a certain por-
tion of their sentence. At this time, a parole board evaluates the risks
and benefits of an inmate’s early release from prison. If parole is
granted, the parole board then monitors the offender’s conduct until
the sentence is completed. Should the offender not comply with the
conditions of parole or be arrested for another crime, the board can
revoke parole, returning the offender to prison to complete the orig-
inal sentence.

CRITICAL REVIEW Evaluations of probation and parole
have been mixed. There is little question that community-based
programs are much less expensive than conventional imprison-
ment; they also free up room in prisons for people who commit
more serious crimes. Yet research suggests that although pro-
bation and shock probation do seem to work for some people,
they do not significantly reduce criminal recidivism. Similarly,
parole is useful to prison officials as a means to encourage good
behavior among prison inmates who hope for early release. Yet
levels of crime among those released on parole are so high that

196 CHAPTER 7 Deviance

community-based corrections correctional programs operating within
society at large rather than behind prison walls

“Community-based corrections” refers to ways of dealing
with offenders without sending them to prison.

a number of states have ended their parole programs entirely
(Inciardi, 2000).

Such evaluations point to a sobering truth: By itself, the
criminal justice system cannot eliminate crime. As the Contro-
versy & Debate box explains, although police, courts, and pris-

ons do affect crime rates, crime and other deviance are not just
the acts of “bad people” but reflect the operation of society itself.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING What are three types of
community-based corrections? What are their advantages?

Deviance CHAPTER 7 197

Violent Crime Is Down—but Why?

DUANE: I’m a criminal justice major, and I want to
be a police officer. Crime is a huge problem in
America, and police are what keeps the crime
rate low.

SANDY: I’m a sociology major. As for combating
crime, I’m not sure it’s quite that simple….

During the 1980s, crime rates shot upward. Just
about everyone lived in fear of violent crime, and
in many larger cities, the numbers of people
killed and wounded made whole neighborhoods
seem like war zones. There seemed to be no
solution to the problem.

Yet in the 1990s, serious crime rates began
to fall so that in recent years they have returned
to levels not seen in more than a generation.
Why? Researchers point to several reasons:

1. A reduction in the youth population. It was
noted earlier that young people (particularly
males) are responsible for much violent crime.
Between 1990 and 2000, the share of the pop-
ulation aged fifteen to twenty-four
dropped by about 5 percent (in part
because of the legalization of abortion in
1973).

2. Changes in policing. Much of the
drop in crime (like the earlier rise in
crime) has taken place in large cities. In
New York City, the number of murders
fell from 2,245 in 1990 to 475 in 2009,
the lowest figure since the city started
keeping reliable records in 1963. Part of
the reason for the decline is that the city
adopted a policy of community policing,
which means that police are concerned
not just with making arrests but with
preventing crime. Officers get to know
the areas they patrol and frequently stop

young men for jaywalking or other minor
infractions so they can check them for con-
cealed weapons (the word is out that you can
be arrested for carrying a gun). In addition,
there are more police at work in large cities.
For example, Los Angeles added more than
2,000 police in the 1990s, and it, too, saw its
violent crime rate fall during that period.

3. More prisoners. Between 1985 and 2009,
the number of inmates in U.S. prisons soared
from 750,000 to 2.4 million. The main reason
for this increase is tough new laws that
demand prison time for many crimes, espe-
cially drug offenses. As one analyst put it,
“When you lock up an extra million people,
it’s got to have some effect on the crime rate”
(Franklin Zimring, quoted in Witkin, 1998:31).

4. A better economy. The U.S. economy
boomed during the 1990s. With unemploy-
ment down, more people were working, reduc-
ing the likelihood that some would turn to

crime out of economic desperation. The logic
here is simple: More jobs, fewer crimes. By the
same token, the recent economic downturn
has slowed the downward crime trend.

5. The declining drug trade. Many analysts
think that the most important factor in reduc-
ing rates of violent crime is the decline of
crack cocaine. Crack came on the scene
around 1985, and violence spread, especially
in the inner cities, as young people—facing
few legitimate job opportunities and increas-
ingly armed with guns—became part of a
booming drug trade.

By the early 1990s, however, the popularity of
crack had begun to fall as people saw the dam-
age the drug was causing to entire communi-
ties. This realization, coupled with steady
economic improvement and stiffer sentences for
drug offenses, helped bring about the turn-
around in violent crime.

The current picture looks better relative to
what it was a decade or two ago. But one
researcher cautions, “It looks better, but only
because the early 1990s were so bad. So let’s
not fool ourselves into thinking everything is
resolved. It’s not.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Do you support the policy of community
policing? Why or why not?

2. What do you see as the pros and cons of
building more prisons?

3. Of all the factors mentioned here, which do
you think is the most important in crime
control? Which is least important? Why?

Sources: Winship & Berrien (1999), Donahue & Levitt (2000),
Rosenfeld (2002), Liptak (2008), and C. Mitchell (2008).

CONTROVERSY
& DEBATE

One reason that crime has gone down is that there are
more than 2 million people incarcerated in this country.
This has caused severe overcrowding of facilities such
as this Maricopa County, Arizona, prison.

Community-based corrections save both money
and avoid the stigma of incarceration. Does your
local community make use of this strategy?

Seeing Sociology
in Everyday Life

Do you consider prison overcrowding to be a problem? Why do you
think our society is tolerant of such conditions?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life
Chapter 7 Deviance

Why do most of us—at least most of the time—
obey the rules?

As this chapter explains, every society is a system of social control that encourages conformity
to certain norms and discourages deviance or norm breaking. One way society does this is
through the construction of heroes and villains. Heroes, of course, are people we are supposed
to look up to and use as role models. Villains are people whom we look down on and reject their
example. Organizations of all types create heroes that serve as guides to everyday behavior. In
each case below, who is being made into a hero? Why? What are the values or behaviors that we
are encouraged to copy in our own lives?

HINT A society without heroes and villains would be one in which no one cared how
people think or act. Societies create heroes as role models that are supposed to inspire us
to be more like them. Societies create heroes by emphasizing one aspect of someone’s life
and ignoring lots of other things. For example, Babe Ruth was a great ball player, but his pri-
vate life was sometimes less than inspiring. Perhaps this is why the Catholic church never con-
siders anyone a candidate for sainthood until after—usually long after—the person has died.

198

Colleges and universities create heroes in various ways. Here
we see the president of Washington College (Maryland) award-
ing the Sophie Kerr Prize at a recent graduation ceremony. This

prize, which included a check for more than $50,000, rec-
ognized English major Claire Tompkins’s ability to write

outstanding short stories. What is heroic in this case?
What does graduating with honors or Latin praise
(cum laude and so on) define as heroic? What
about villains—how do col-
leges and universities create
them, too?

1. Do athletic teams, fraternities and sororities, and even peo-
ple in a college classroom create heroes and villains?
Explain how and why.

2. Identity theft is a new type of crime that victimizes as many
as 10 million people each year in the United States.
Research this phenomenon, and explain how this offense
differs from property crime that takes place “on the street.”
(Consider differences in the crime, the offenders, and the
victims.)

3. Watch an episode of a real-action police show such as Cops.
Based on what you see, how would you profile the people
who commit crimes?

Applying SOCIOLOGY in Everyday Life

199

Most sports have a “hall of fame.”
A larger-than-life-size statue of
the legendary slugger Babe Ruth
attracts these New York City chil-
dren on their visit to the Baseball
Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,
New York. What are the qualities
that make an athlete “legendary”?
Isn’t it more than just how far
someone hits a ball?

Religious organizations, too, use
heroes to encourage certain behav-
ior and beliefs. The Roman
Catholic Church has defined the
Virgin Mary and more than 10,000
other men and women as “saints.”
For what reasons might someone
be honored in this way? What do
saints do for the rest of us?

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Making the Grade
CHAPTER 7 Deviance

What Is Deviance?

Theoretical Analysis of Deviance

DEVIANCE refers to norm violations ranging from minor infractions, such as bad manners, to major infractions,
such as serious violence.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES view all behavior—deviant as well as conforming—as products of society.
Sociologists point out that

• what is deviant varies from place to place according to cultural norms

• behavior and individuals become deviant as others define them that way

• what and who a society defines as deviant reflect who has social power and who does not

BIOLOGICAL THEORIES

• focus on individual abnormality

• explain human behavior as the result of biological

instincts

Lombroso claimed criminals have apelike physical
traits; later research links criminal behavior to
certain body types and genetics.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES

• focus on individual abnormality

• see deviance as the result of “unsuccessful
socialization”

Reckless and Dinitz’s containment theory links
delinquency to weak conscience.

pp. 173–74

Durkheim claimed that deviance is a normal
element of society that

• affirms cultural norms and values

• clarifies moral boundaries

• brings people together

• encourages social change

Merton’s strain theory explains deviance in terms
of a society’s cultural goals and the means available
to achieve them.

Deviant subcultures are discussed by Cloward and
Ohlin, Cohen, Miller, and Anderson.

pp. 176–77

pp. 175–76

Theories of Deviance

The Functions of Deviance: Structural-Functional Analysis

Labeling theory claims that deviance depends less
on what someone does than on how others react to
that behavior. If people respond to primary deviance
by stigmatizing a person, secondary deviance and a
deviant career may result.

The medicalization of deviance is the
transformation of moral and legal deviance into a
medical condition. In practice, this means a change
in labels, replacing “good” and “bad” with “sick”
and “well.”

pp. 179–81pp. 178–79

Sutherland’s differential association theory links
deviance to how much others encourage or
discourage such behavior.

Hirschi’s control theory states that imagining the
possible consequences of deviance often discourages
such behavior. People who are well integrated into
society are less likely to engage in deviant behavior.p. 181

Labeling Theory: Symbolic-Interaction Analysis

pp. 174–75

… Biological and psychological theories provide a limited understanding of crime and other deviance because
most violations are carried out by people who are normal (pp. 173, 174).

See the Applying Theory table on page 185.

p. 172

pp. 172–73

pp. 181–82

deviance (p. 172) the recognized violation of cultural
norms

crime (p. 172) the violation of a society’s formally
enacted criminal law

social control (p. 172) attempts by society to
regulate people’s thoughts and behavior

criminal justice system (p. 172) the organizations—
police, courts, and prison officials—that respond to
alleged violations of the law

labeling theory (p. 178) the idea that deviance and
conformity result not so much from what people do
as from how others respond to those actions

stigma (p. 178) a powerfully negative label that
greatly changes a person’s self-concept and
social identity

medicalization of deviance (p. 179) the
transformation of moral and legal deviance into a
medical condition

white-collar crime (p. 183) crime committed by
people of high social position in the course of their
occupations

corporate crime (p. 184) the illegal actions of a
corporation or people acting on its behalf

organized crime (p. 184) a business supplying illegal
goods or services

hate crime (p. 185) a criminal act against a person or
a person’s property by an offender motivated by racial
or other bias

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201

What Is Crime?

The U.S. Criminal Justice System

Based on Karl Marx’s ideas, social-conflict theory holds that laws and other norms
operate to protect the interests of powerful members of any society.

• White-collar offenses are committed by people of high social position as part of
their jobs. Sutherland claimed such offenses are rarely prosecuted and are most
likely to end up in civil rather than criminal court.

• Corporate crime refers to illegal actions by a corporation or people acting on its
behalf. Although corporate crimes cause considerable public harm, most cases
of corporate crime go unpunished.

• Organized crime has a long history in the United States, especially among
categories of people with few legitimate opportunities.

• What people consider deviant reflects the relative power and privilege of
different categories of people.

• Hate crimes are crimes motivated by racial or other bias; they target people
with disadvantages based on race, gender, or sexual orientation.

• In the United States and elsewhere, societies control the behavior of women
more closely than that of men.

CRIME is the violation of criminal laws enacted by local, state, or federal governments. There are two major
categories of serious crime:

• crimes against the person (violent crime), including murder, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery

• crimes against property (property crime), including burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft, and arson

PATTERNS OF CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES

• Official statistics show that arrest rates peak in late adolescence and drop steadily with advancing age.

• About 65% of people arrested for property crimes and 82% of people arrested for violent crimes are male.

• Street crime is more common among people of lower social position. Including white-collar and corporate
crime makes class differences in criminality smaller.

• More whites than African Americans are arrested for street crimes. However, more African Americans are arrested
than whites in relation to their population size. Asian Americans have a lower-than-average rate of arrest.

• By world standards, the U.S. crime rate is high.

pp. 182–84

pp. 186–87

pp. 187–91

pp. 184–86

The police maintain public order by enforcing the law.

• Police use personal discretion in deciding
whether and how to handle a situation.

• Research suggests that police are more likely to
make an arrest if the offense is serious, if
bystanders are present, or if the suspect is
African American or Latino.

There are four justifications for punishment:

• retribution

• deterrence

• rehabilitation

• societal protection

Community-based corrections include probation
and parole. These programs lower the cost of
supervising people convicted of crimes and reduce
prison overcrowding but have not been shown to
reduce recidivism.

Courts rely on an adversarial process in which
attorneys—one representing the defendant and one
representing the state—present their cases in the
presence of a judge who monitors legal procedures.

• In practice, U.S. courts resolve most cases through
plea bargaining. Though efficient, this method puts
less powerful people at a disadvantage.

p. 192

Police Courts

Punishment

Deviance and Inequality: Social-Conflict Analysis Deviance, Race, and Gender

crimes against the person (p. 187) crimes that
direct violence or the threat of violence against
others; also known as violent crimes

crimes against property (p. 187) crimes that involve
theft of money or property belonging to others; also
known as property crimes

victimless crimes (p. 187) violations of law in which
there are no obvious victims

p. 193

pp. 193–95

pp. 196–97

See the Summing Up table on page 194.

The death penalty remains controversial in the
United States, the only high-income Western nation
that routinely executes serious offenders. The long-
term trend is toward fewer executions.

p. 195

plea bargaining (p. 193) a legal negotiation in which
a prosecutor reduces a charge in exchange for a
defendant’s guilty plea

retribution (p. 193) an act of moral vengeance by
which society makes the offender suffer as much as
the suffering caused by the crime

deterrence (p. 193) the attempt to discourage
criminality through the use of punishment

rehabilitation (p. 194) a program for reforming the
offender to prevent later offenses

societal protection (p. 194) rendering an offender
incapable of further offenses temporarily through
imprisonment or permanently by execution

criminal recidivism (p. 195) later offenses by people
previously convicted of crimes

community-based corrections (p. 196) correctional
programs operating within society at large rather
than behind prison walls

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Society: The Basics, Eleventh Edition, by John J. Macionis. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.

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